# Polish Catholic Mission Parish Registers: Baptisms and Marriages Source: https://www.polishgenealogist.co.uk/polish-britain/polish-catholic-mission-parish-registers-britain/ Last updated: 2026-10-12 Summary: What the registers of Polish Catholic parishes in Britain record, where they are kept, and how a certificate from a Polish church leads to the parish in Poland. Publisher: The Polish Genealogist (professional Polish genealogy research, polishgenealogist.co.uk) --- Many British families with Polish roots hold a baptism or marriage certificate issued not in Poland but by a Polish parish in England, Wales or Scotland: a wedding in a camp chapel in 1948, a christening at a Polish church in Bradford in 1955, a first communion in Slough. These certificates are written in Polish, often in Latin as well, and record more than their British civil equivalents: the parents’ full names, the mother’s maiden name, the godparents and, in many cases, the parish in Poland where the parents themselves were baptised. This guide explains how the Polish Catholic parishes in Britain came about, what their registers contain, where the registers and the Mission’s archive are kept today, and how a certificate from a Polish church in Britain leads to the family’s parish in Poland. > **Does a certificate from a Polish church in Britain name a parish in Poland?** Send us the names, the parish and an approximate date. We find the matching Polish birth or marriage entry and explain it in English. [See how we find your record](https://www.polishgenealogist.co.uk/services/polish-vital-records-search/) ### Polish Catholic parishes in Britain The Polish Catholic Mission in England and Wales dates its beginnings to 1853, when a Polish priest began holding services for Poles in a chapel in Soho. In 1928 the Mission bought the church on Devonia Road in Islington, consecrated in 1930 as the first Polish church in Britain. The great expansion came after 1945. Polish army chaplains followed their men into the Polish Resettlement Corps camps and the hostels, said Mass in barrack chapels and kept registers for their congregations; as the camps closed in the 1950s the chaplains and their people moved into the towns, and Polish parishes were founded wherever a community settled. In 1948 Archbishop Griffin of Westminster appointed the rector Vicar Delegate for Polish civilians in England and Wales, with the authority of an Ordinary; the Mission describes this as the creation of a personal Polish diocese. Today it covers about seventy parishes and more than two hundred places where Mass is said in Polish. Scotland was outside the arrangement between the Polish and English church authorities. The Polish Catholic Mission in Scotland organised its own parishes, and Polish congregations grew up in the garrison towns of the east coast and in Glasgow, where St Simon’s in Partick has served Poles since the 1940s. ### What the registers record A Polish parish in Britain kept the registers that canon law requires: baptisms, marriages, deaths and, in many parishes, confirmations and first communions. Entries follow the Polish and Latin pattern rather than the British one. A baptism entry gives the child’s names, the date and place of birth, the parents’ names with the mother’s maiden name, their address and often their occupation and place of origin in Poland, and the godparents. A marriage entry gives both parties’ names, ages, places of birth, parents’ names including both mothers’ maiden names, the witnesses, and sometimes a note that the parties had produced their own baptismal certificates from Poland, with the name of the issuing parish. Those last details are what make these registers valuable. A British civil marriage certificate of 1948 names only the fathers; the chaplain’s register for the same wedding may name both parents of each party and the Polish parishes of baptism. Where a soldier could not produce a Polish certificate, the register often records a sworn statement with his date and place of baptism as he remembered it. ### Where the registers are today Sacramental registers normally stay with the parish that created them. For a Polish parish still in existence the register is kept by the parish priest, who can issue a certificate from it. Registers of chaplaincies and camp chapels that closed were passed to the parish that took over the congregation or to the Mission in London. The Mission’s archive at Devonia Road, the largest Polish archive in Britain, holds the Mission’s administrative records, the correspondence of Polish parishes and priests, photographs and community papers in seventeen thematic sections, and since 2024 has been cataloguing and digitising its holdings under a programme funded by the Polish Ministry of Culture. Enquiries about a particular register should name the parish or camp, the sacrament and the approximate date; the Mission’s office can say whether the register is with a parish or in the archive. Diocesan archives of the English and Welsh dioceses hold the records of those Polish congregations that worshipped in diocesan churches. - **Living parish:** ask the parish office for a certificate from the register, giving names and approximate date. - **Closed chaplaincy or camp chapel:** ask the Mission’s archive which parish inherited the register. - **Scotland:** ask the Polish Catholic Mission in Scotland or the parish concerned; Scottish civil registers, which name both parents of each spouse, often supply the same details. ### Reading a Polish certificate issued in Britain Certificates from these parishes are usually a printed form in Polish, sometimes bilingual, completed by hand. The headings to look for are: imię i nazwisko (name and surname), data i miejsce urodzenia (date and place of birth), imiona rodziców (parents’ names), nazwisko panieńskie matki (mother’s maiden name), rodzice chrzestni (godparents) and parafia (parish). A place of birth given as a village with its parish and district is a precise Polish address; one given as a district town may stand for a cluster of parishes. Spellings in these registers are Polish, with diacritics, which makes them a reliable guide for searching Polish indexes. ### A worked example An illustrative case, not a client file. A family in Swindon holds a 1949 marriage certificate from a camp chapel in Wiltshire, in Polish and Latin, naming the groom’s parents and his baptism in a parish in the Przemyśl district, and the bride’s parents and her baptism in Lida. The civil certificate for the same marriage names only the fathers. With the parish of baptism named, the groom’s birth entry is found in the Roman Catholic register of that parish, held in the Polish state archives, and names his grandparents. The bride’s parish in Lida, now in Belarus, is searched in the Lithuanian and Belarusian records to which its registers were transferred. ### From the British register to the Polish parish A certificate from a Polish church in Britain usually removes the hardest step in Polish research, finding the right parish. What remains is to find the entry itself in a register that may be held in a Polish state archive, a diocesan archive, the parish or, for the former eastern voivodeships, the archives of Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania. Our guide to [Polish church records](https://www.polishgenealogist.co.uk/vital-records/polish-church-records/) explains how those registers are organised, and our [guide to finding a birth entry](https://www.polishgenealogist.co.uk/vital-records/finding-a-birth-entry-in-poland/) covers the civil and parish systems by partition. Our Polish vital record search takes the parish and names from your certificate, finds the single matching entry and explains it in English; when the first entry opens earlier generations, our research packages continue the line. ### Official sources - [Polish Catholic Mission in England and Wales](https://www.pcmew.org/en) - [Polish Catholic Mission archive](https://www.pcmew.org/en/archiwum) - [Polish Catholic Mission: history](https://www.pcmew.org/en/historia) - [Catholic Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales: the Polish Catholic Mission](https://www.cbcew.org.uk/home/the-bishops/polish-catholic-mission-in-england-and-wales/) - [ScotlandsPeople](https://www.scotlandspeople.gov.uk/) ### Related guides - [Polish church records](https://www.polishgenealogist.co.uk/vital-records/polish-church-records/) - [A British certificate for a Polish-born relative](https://www.polishgenealogist.co.uk/polish-britain/british-certificate-polish-born-relative/) - [Polish resettlement camps in the UK](https://www.polishgenealogist.co.uk/polish-britain/polish-resettlement-camps-hostels/) - [Reading Latin in Polish parish records](https://www.polishgenealogist.co.uk/vital-records/read-latin-polish-parish-records/) > **Research service:** Found a Polish birthplace in a British record? · Discover the details in an original family record · [Order a record search](https://www.polishgenealogist.co.uk/services/polish-vital-records-search/) --- Research help: The Polish Genealogist researches Polish family history, military service and citizenship evidence in Polish, British and international archives, with reports in English. Services and prices: https://www.polishgenealogist.co.uk/services/