Probate Records: How to Find a Will in England and Wales

Probate records show what happened to a person’s property after death. In England and Wales, every will proved and every grant of administration since 12 January 1858 is listed in one national index, the probate calendar. An entry usually gives the person’s name, last address, date and place of death, the executors or administrators and the value of the estate. You can then order a copy of the grant and of the will itself.

The index is free to search on GOV.UK, and a copy costs £16 at the time of writing (September 2026). Wills proved before 1858 went through the church courts: those of the Prerogative Court of Canterbury are at The National Archives, and most others are in county record offices. This guide covers both periods, what a will can tell you, and how a will made by a Pole in Britain can lead back to records in Poland.

What the national probate calendar gives you (from 1858)

On 12 January 1858 probate passed from the church courts to a new civil system, and the Principal Probate Registry began keeping a copy of every will proved and every grant of administration. Each year’s grants were printed in an alphabetical calendar, which is still the main finding aid.

According to The National Archives, a calendar entry may contain:

the full name, address and occupation of the deceased
the date and place of death
the date and place of the grant (London or a district probate registry)
the full names of the executors or administrators, sometimes with their relationship to the deceased
the value of the estate

Even before you order anything, the entry can confirm a date of death, give a last address to check against the census or electoral registers, and name the widow, child or friend who acted as executor. The value of the estate hints at the family’s circumstances.

Probate or administration?

Not every entry means there is a will. GOV.UK explains that grants described as “Probate”, “Admon with Will” or “Grant and Will” include a will. A grant of “Administration” (Admon) does not. It was issued when someone died without a valid will and appointed administrators, usually the widow or next of kin, to deal with the estate. The calendar entry is just as useful, but there is no will to order.

How to use the GOV.UK Find a will service

The official service is “Search probate records for documents and wills” on GOV.UK. It covers England and Wales only, for people who died after 1857.

Choose the period. There is one search for 1858 to 1996 and another for 1996 onwards.
Enter the surname and the year of death. For the years up to 1995 you are taken to the matching page of the printed probate calendar, where you can read the entries yourself.
Look beyond the year of death. Records are filed under the year the grant was issued, so check the following years too. For a death in the early 1990s, GOV.UK suggests also searching the records from 1996 onwards.
Match the entry on first name, date of death and last address before you order.
Order the copy (£16 online), which includes the will if there is one.

You can also search by post with form PA1S. This costs £16, including a copy, and GOV.UK says to expect a reply within 4 weeks. New grants appear online about 14 days after they are issued. If probate has not yet been granted, a standing search (£4) asks the registry to send you a copy of any grant made in the next 6 months.

The calendar for 1858 to 1966 is also on Ancestry, a subscription site, as the “National Probate Calendar”. Copies of grants and wills, however, are ordered through GOV.UK.

Soldiers’ wills are a separate case. GOV.UK has a “Find a soldier’s will” service, and The National Archives describes its index as covering those who died while serving in the British armed forces between 1850 and 1986.

Wills before 1858: the church courts

Before 12 January 1858 wills were proved in more than 200 church courts, each with its own registers, and there is no single national index. Which court handled a will depended mainly on where the person lived, how much they owned and whether their property lay in more than one jurisdiction.

Prerogative Court of Canterbury (The National Archives)

The Prerogative Court of Canterbury (PCC) was the senior and busiest probate court. It covered the south of England and Wales but proved wills from across both countries. Its registered copy wills, 1384 to 1858, are in series PROB 11 at The National Archives. More than a million can be searched by name, place and occupation in the Discovery catalogue and downloaded for a fee, or viewed free at Kew. The year in the catalogue is the year of probate, and the will may have been written long before. PCC administrations are in PROB 6.

Prerogative Court of York and the local courts

The Prerogative Court of York covered Yorkshire, Durham, Northumberland, Cumberland, Westmorland, Lancashire, Cheshire, Nottinghamshire and the Isle of Man. Below the two prerogative courts sat the bishops’ consistory courts, archdeacons’ courts and “peculiars”. Their records are mostly in county and diocesan record offices, so start with the record office for the county where the person lived and look for a wills index in its online catalogue.

Before 1858 fewer people left wills, and married women generally needed their husband’s permission to make one, so most women’s wills from this period are those of spinsters and widows.

What a will can reveal about a family

The calendar entry is a summary. The will itself, ordered from GOV.UK or found in the church court records, often gives much more:

Relatives by name: a spouse, children (including married daughters under their married names), grandchildren, siblings, nephews and nieces.
Relationships: phrases such as “my brother-in-law” or “my late wife’s sister” can connect families you had not linked.
Addresses: of the testator, executors and beneficiaries, which lead to census entries, electoral registers and local directories.
Property: a house, a business, shares or a plot of land, and sometimes personal items such as a watch, medals or a prayer book.
Relatives abroad: legacies to a brother in America or a sister “in Poland”, often with a town or village name.
Witnesses and executors: friends, neighbours, solicitors or members of the same parish, church or ex-servicemen’s circle.

Omissions can matter too. A child left out of a will may have died, emigrated or fallen out with the family, which gives you something to test in other records.

Pitfalls when searching probate indexes

Surname spelling: the calendar is alphabetical, so a variant spelling sits on a different page. Try every plausible form and read the pages either side.
Polish names mis-indexed: a name such as Wojciechowski might appear as Wojchowski, Wojciechowsky or under an anglicised form. Diacritics were dropped (Łukasz may appear as Lukasz), and clerks sometimes swapped first name and surname.
Anglicised and changed names: many Poles in Britain later used English names, sometimes by deed poll. Search both names, and see our guide to anglicised Polish surnames.
Feminine surname forms: in Polish, Kowalski becomes Kowalska for a woman. A wife or sister may be indexed under either form.
Married women’s names: search under the married surname at the time of death, and try earlier married names if she was widowed and remarried. Entries may describe a woman as a wife, widow or spinster, which is itself a clue.
Year of grant, not year of death: probate can follow a death by several years, especially when the estate was complicated or included property abroad.
No entry at all: many people with small estates or jointly owned property never needed a grant, so a missing entry proves nothing about where they died.

A worked example (illustrative)

The following entry is invented to show how to read a calendar line; it does not relate to a real person.

KOWALSKI Jan of 14 Mill Street Bradford died 3 March 1962 Probate Leeds 20 June to Maria Kowalska widow. Effects £1,240.

This gives the date of death, the last address, the widow’s first name and the size of the estate. The will might then read: “I give the sum of one hundred pounds to my sister Zofia Nowak of Tarnów, Poland.” That one line supplies a sister’s married surname and a Polish town, enough to start looking for the Kowalski family in the Tarnów registers.

From a British will to Polish records

Poles who settled in Britain, before the Second World War or among the soldiers and families who stayed after 1945, often left legacies to relatives in Poland. A bequest “to my brother in Poland” or “to my mother at Nowy Sącz” is one of the few documents in which a Polish-born parent names family and a home town in their own words.

To turn those clues into Polish research:

Copy every name and place exactly as spelled in the will, then work out the Polish form. English clerks often wrote Polish places by ear.
Identify the place and its parish or civil registry office. Several villages can share one name, so use the county or nearest town if the will gives it.
Combine the will with other British records. A naturalisation file usually gives an exact date and place of birth and the parents’ names, and a death certificate confirms age at death.
Search for the birth entry in Poland, using the siblings named in the will to confirm you have the right family. Our guide to finding a birth entry in Poland explains which registers to look for and where they are held.
Follow the married names. A sister named as “Zofia Nowak” married a Nowak, and her marriage record will name her parents, linking her back to the testator.

Scotland and Northern Ireland

Scotland has its own system. Instead of probate, the court grants “confirmation” to the executors, and the record is a testament: a testament testamentar where there was a will, a testament dative where there was not. Wills and testaments from 1513 to 1925 are indexed and imaged on ScotlandsPeople. Records from 1925 to 1999 are not digitised; they are indexed in the printed Calendar of Confirmations and can be seen in the National Records of Scotland’s Historical Search Room.

Northern Ireland wills are at the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland (PRONI). Its online will calendars cover the district probate registries of Armagh, Belfast and Londonderry from 1858 to 1965, with digitised copy wills for Armagh (1858 to 1918), Belfast (1858 to 1909) and Londonderry (1858 to 1899).