Enquiries & Research

Enquiries

The Isle of Man Public Record Office welcomes enquiries relating to our collection. We recommend that enquiries be sent via email where possible, but we are also happy to receive queries via phone call or letter. Our aim is to provide a full response to all enquiries within 10 working days of acknowledgement of receipt.


Research

While the team will make every effort to answer all enquiries, we are unable to offer a full research service. Where enquiries are too complex to be answered by the team, we will endeavour to identify records of relevance, or direct you to other resources.


Family history

While we hold a number of records of interest to family historians, we recommend the following as initial resources for those in the early stages of family research:

The Isle of Man Civil Registry – birth, death and marriage certificates.
The Isle of Man Deed and Probate Registry – Deeds and Probate records registered from 1911.
The Manx Museum Library and Archives – Deeds and Probate records registered prior to 1911; Isle of Man Parish registers.
iMuseum Newspapers and Publications – Searchable, digitised Isle of Man newspapers from 1792 to 1960.


Access to closed records

Our aim at the Isle of Man Public Record Office is to make records open to the public wherever possible. Occasionally, an individual record or a collection of records may be designated as ‘Closed’. This may be because the records contain sensitive information that is required by law to be closed to the public for a certain time. There are also record sequences under the custody of the Public Record Office but still owned by the creating body.

You may still be able to access closed records via application which will be considered by the depositing/creator body or their successor. For more information on closed records and how to access them please see the information sheet: A guide to accessing ‘closed’ records.