The Family Records Centre (FRC) provided access to family history research sources mainly for England and Wales. It was administered jointly by the General Register Office (GRO) and The National Archives. It opened in March 1997 and was fully operational by the following month. It was situated at 1 Myddelton Street, Clerkenwell, London, close to the London Metropolitan Archives. It closed in 2008. Throughout the FRC, there was free access to a wide range of family history material, databases and internet websites. Staff were always available to provide help and advice on family history research and there were regular one-to-one family history surgeries and computer skills tutorials. Talks on family history topics took place every week and other events, including exhibitions and conferences, were organised. There were good facilities for customers with special needs, and there was a small bookshop next to the entrance on the ground floor and a refreshment area with vending machines and lockers for personal belongings in the basement. Its main resources were indexes to civil registration of births, marriages and deaths on the ground floor (provided by the GRO), and the Victorian census returns on the first floor (provided by The National Archives). Births, Marriages & Deaths Indexes The births, marriages and deaths indexes were in large, heavy, hardcover books (red covers for births, green for marriages and black for deaths) in three sections respectively, with each section arranged in date order. Using the details from an index, a copy (certificate) of the corresponding birth, marriage or death entry could be applied for at the cashiers' section on the same floor. Other indexes at the FRC included some births, marriages and deaths of British nationals which took place abroad from 1761, indexes of legal adoptions in England & Wales from 1927 onwards, and various indexes of war deaths in the armed forces in South Africa, both World Wars and elsewhere. The births, marriages and deaths indexes were originally at Somerset House until the 1970s. In the early 1980s, the births and marriages indexes were at St Catherine's House, at the northeast corner of the intersection of Kingsway and Aldwych, and the deaths indexes were at Alexandra House, farther up Kingsway. After more space was made available at St Catherine's House, the deaths indexes were moved from Alexandra House. Finally, they were all moved to the FRC in 1997. Census returns for England and Wales The