Go to your local records office, where you'll gain free access.

will that be paper records or computer based ?

If I had the time I'd suck up the subscription and get stuck into Ancestry.com. My MIL started hers 5 yrs ago and has 11000 members in her tree 😯 She's also pieced together loads of mine and has turned into a right little investigator.

It helps if you have a bunch of names, locations and occupations going back say 100 years.

Ancestry.com seems to be having a free access weekend until the end of tomorrow, so now's the time to fill your boots. UK records only though - you still have to pay for the rest.

[quote=smartay ]will that be paper records or computer based ?
In mine it's now mostly computer based. I think some old Parish records might still be on fiche though.

I thought access to stuff like Registry House was still paid access? maybe not.

Other than Ancestry, other place is the Mormons -- Family Search I think it is -- but you'd have to double check the records that they give as results..

I took a good deal of research on part of my family - Stirling - as done by a couple of uncles and cousins, and followed that further, filling in details, to generate a family tree. I used that detail to fill in the other 3/4 of my ancestry, on my other grand parents that didn't get the full treatment, and found a heap of interesting stuff, great aunts that my mum didn't know about, tracing mum's family back to darkest Accrington & Haworth..