Introduction
In partnership with several local authority and university archives in Scotland, National Records of Scotland (NRS) look after the records of the Church of Scotland and several other Presbyterian denominations.
The records consist of the minutes and accounts of kirk sessions, presbyteries, synods and the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland. They also contain a wide variety of other documents, providing a picture of everyday life in Scotland from the sixteenth century onwards and amount to more than 25,000 volumes, about 5 million pages of information.
What the records contain
The Scottish Reformation saw the introduction of a new system to run church affairs: the General Assembly, synods, presbyteries, and kirk sessions. Presbyterians who later broke away from the Kirk also adopted a church court system.
The records created by church courts are very useful for family history, local history and academic research. Of most interest for genealogists and local historians are the minutes of the kirk sessions, which typically contain a detailed and often colourful record of the discipline the minister and kirk elders handed out to errant parishioners for offences such as drunkenness, swearing, breaking the Sabbath, quarrelling and sexual misdemeanours. Other records include proclamations of banns, communion rolls, seat rent books and poor relief accounts.
Deposited in NRS since 1960, church court records are cared for by the NRS and by local archives under charge and superintendence of the Keeper of the Records of Scotland. They include the records of other presbyterian churches which united with the Church of Scotland.
Online access
NRS has released thousands of digitised church court records for general access on the Scotland's People website. Indexes can be searched for baptism, marriage and burial registers from kirk session records for congregations of the Reformed Presbyterian Church, Original Secession Church (and subsequent secession churches), the Relief Church, and the Free Church which re-joined the Church of Scotland. A list of the congregations for which indexes can be searched can be found in the Church Registers guide on Scotland’s People.
In March 2021, NRS launched a new service on Scotland's People called Virtual Volumes. Records in this area are made available without intensive indexing of their contents by personal name, place or other subjects. You can browse records in the form of volumes of digital images. This comprises more than a million pages from over 10,000 records of kirk sessions and other courts of the Church of Scotland. You can browse church court records for free and pay a small fee if you wish to save/download the images to your account. More church court records will be added periodically.
In June 2026, NRS released a large number of additional church court records to Scotland’s People. These are a wide variety of kirk session records for congregations of the Reformed Presbyterian Church, Original Secession Church (and subsequent secession churches), the Relief Church, and the Free Church which re-joined the Church of Scotland (NRS reference CH3). Please see a list of CH3 congregations included in this release.
For more information about this service and the records available, please read the guidance on church court records, kirk session records and using Virtual Volumes on Scotland’s People.
