Thanks for the visionofbritain info, plus the familysearch maps. I have seen odd fragments of the familysearch maps, but never explored the thing in full. Thank you. Very useful as it is graphical, interactive, and based on 1851, so is pre- county council era (hence worcestershire still spread all over the place like spilt coffee!), but after some tidying up in the preceding decade, so counties are not QUITE as fragmented as in the previous century. It is nonetheless very useful at a good level of detail, albeit for only one date. I have bookmarked it. To this i can add the genuki pages starting here http://www.ukbmd.org.uk/genuki/reg/districts/index.html listing the changes affecting registration districts, their constituent parishes and counties, all the way from 1837 forwards, and linked to from free BMD. I tried to count the changes affecting shipston on stour, but ran out of fingers! Not graphical, but most changes can be mentally projected onto the familysearch maps, though not all, as parish boundaries may change. All we need is a way to graft all this together (maybe that is what we need our brains for!) I note that FMP does not seem to allow registration district to be entered as a search term in gro index searches, nor to filter or prioritise results, even indirectly; but indirectly ancestry does (as a place name). Shipston on stour RD is interesting as free BMD has it as Warwickshire (and this is the basis of the Ancestry search), but familysearch map has it spread across three counties, warwickshire, gloucestershire and Worcestershire. Actually, specific *results* in free BMD DO mention the spread across 3 counties, but even that is apparently lost if you search via ancestry (value subtracted?). [Tested by searching for a specific 1849 birth.] Most of the visionofbritain stuff is closed to me, as joe public, and the rest seemed to be suffering from broken links today, but i see that some of the data only goes back to 1906. If anyone knows a way to sort, filter or search for registration district in fmp, i would love to know. Perhaps it will do that if i don't explicitly limit myself to the gro data sets, so can enter it as a placename? Who knows? Is there a well hidden "advanced search" feature? I do find myself using free BMD a great deal more these days for gro searches, unless i want a post 1950s event. It is so open to manipulation of the results, that the value i get out is FAR greater than on any pay platform. Sorry, FMP! Sorry Ancestry. Well done free BMD and all who sail in her! Thanks for all the assistance. Dave Beakhust

> FMP does not seem to allow registration district to be entered > as a search term in gro index searches You can enter the registration district as a keyword - it's not ideal, but it works fairly well. To get to the right search form start with "Birth, Marriage, Death & Parish Records" from the dropdown menu on the home page, then choose (say) "Births & baptisms" from the All Collections dropdown menu; finally filter for the specifc record set. Or click here: http://search.findmypast.co.uk/results/united-kingdom-records-in-birth-marriage-death-and-paris h-records/and_births-and-baptisms/england-and-wales-births-1837-2006 Peter