Location of circuit archives

Where are the records of a specific Methodist Church?

To find out, you need to know which District and Circuit covers the church you are interested in. To do this:

1. Go to the map showing church locations and District and Circuit boundaries
   
   Tick the 'Circuits' box on the left, and then click on the map where the church is located. The District and Circuit it is in will be displayed in a pop-up box (The District being listed on the left).
   
   
2. Once you know the District and Circuit, go to the archive listings pages click on the District, then the Circuit.

About these listings

One of the most common enquiries the District Archivists and the Connexional Archives Liaison Officer receive is "Where are the records of XXXX Methodist Church?"

Many people are aware that the national records of the church are looked after in the Methodist Records and Archive Centre at the John Rylands University Library of Manchester. Others know that our missionary records are being cared for at the School of Oriental and African Studies, in the University of London. But where are the records of all the Methodist churches up and down the country?

This guide is designed to help church officers wanting to know where to deposit their records, District Archivists wanting to know what happens outside their own patch, but mainly those people who want to know the Methodist history of an area, or particularly an insight into their family's Methodist history.

The guide is basic, and does not aim to do any more than point people in the right direction. The first step is to know which Circuit covers the area in which you are interested. This can be a complicated question, as individual chapels may have been in a number of Circuits over time, as Methodism reorganised to meet changing circumstances. Such a reorganisation is occurring at the moment as the Church responds to today's needs by creating much larger organisational units.

The guide only deals with the current Circuits of the Methodist Church, although for comparison the Districts and Circuits that were reorganised since 2006 are included.

The details of repositories are taken from the National Register of Archives, which has now been included in The National Archives' Discovery Catalogue. The search screen is at http://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk

This guide would not have been possible without the help of the District Archivists, who do so much to preserve and publicise the written heritage of the Church.