New Register House houses the Court of the Lord Lyon

Court of the Lord Lyon

The Court of the Lord Lyon, also known as the Lyon Court, is a standing court of law which regulates heraldry in Scotland. Like the College of Arms in England it maintains the register of grants of arms, known as the Public Register of All Arms and Bearings in Scotland, as well as records of...

 as well as the main building of the General Register Office for Scotland

General Register Office for Scotland

The General Register Office for Scotland was a non-ministerial directorate of the Scottish Government that administered the registration of births, deaths, marriages, divorces and adoptions in Scotland. It was also responsible for the statutes relating to the formalities of marriage and conduct...

, located near St Andrew Square to the east end of Princes Street

Princes Street

Princes Street is one of the major thoroughfares in central Edinburgh, Scotland, UK, and its main shopping street. It is the southernmost street of Edinburgh's New Town, stretching around 1 mile from Lothian Road in the west to Leith Street in the east. The street is mostly closed to private...

 in the New Town

New Town, Edinburgh

The New Town is a central area of Edinburgh, the capital of Scotland. It is often considered to be a masterpiece of city planning, and is a UNESCO World Heritage Site...

 of Edinburgh

Edinburgh

Edinburgh is the capital city of Scotland, the second largest city in Scotland, and the eighth most populous in the United Kingdom. The City of Edinburgh Council governs one of Scotland's 32 local government council areas. The council area includes urban Edinburgh and a rural area...

, Scotland

Scotland

Scotland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Occupying the northern third of the island of Great Britain, it shares a border with England to the south and is bounded by the North Sea to the east, the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, and the North Channel and Irish Sea to the...

. The building is located in West Register Street behind Robert Adam

Robert Adam

Robert Adam was a Scottish neoclassical architect, interior designer and furniture designer. He was the son of William Adam , Scotland's foremost architect of the time, and trained under him...

's 18th century Register House. The Italianate

Italianate architecture

The Italianate style of architecture was a distinct 19th-century phase in the history of Classical architecture. In the Italianate style, the models and architectural vocabulary of 16th-century Italian Renaissance architecture, which had served as inspiration for both Palladianism and...

 structure was built by architect Robert Matheson between 1859 and 1863 and was very much complementary in architectural style to Adam's Neoclassical

Neoclassical architecture

Neoclassical architecture was an architectural style produced by the neoclassical movement that began in the mid-18th century, manifested both in its details as a reaction against the Rococo style of naturalistic ornament, and in its architectural formulas as an outgrowth of some classicizing...

 original. A portico was added to the south elevation to give it the character of a public building; and the style of internal finish was kept simple. New Register House was needed to provide additional storage capacity for Scotland's archives, particularly for the birth, death and marriage records, which were the result of compulsory registration after 1855. The building was first occupied in 1861 and completed in 1863 following the addition of 5 offices to each floor on the north side. The Accountant in Bankruptcy and Lord Lyon's departments were also allocated rooms. It cost, complete with fittings, nearly £

Pound sterling

The pound sterling , commonly called the pound, is the official currency of the United Kingdom, its Crown Dependencies and the British Overseas Territories of South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands, British Antarctic Territory and Tristan da Cunha. It is subdivided into 100 pence...

35,000 to build.

The main feature of the building is the lofty fireproof central repository, the Dome, which consists of five tiers of ironwork shelving and galleries similar to those at the British Museum

British Museum

The British Museum is a museum of human history and culture in London. Its collections, which number more than seven million objects, are amongst the largest and most comprehensive in the world and originate from all continents, illustrating and documenting the story of human culture from its...

 in London

London

London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

 and is surrounded on the outside by staff and search rooms on three floors. The Dome is a large and striking circular chamber, over 27 m (90 ft) high and of considerable interest as a piece of 19th century functional architecture and structural engineering. The 6.5 km (4 mi) of shelving in the Dome contain some half a million volumes. These include some 400,000 statutory registers of all the births, deaths and marriages in Scotland since 1855, still being added to every year. Red birth volumes are on the first tier, the death volumes in funereal black on the second, and the marriage volumes in green on the third. The original marriage schedules, which are signed by the parties immediately after marriage ceremonies in Scotland, are shelved on the top tier of the Dome as are the open Census records from 1841 to 1891.

It is today popular among genealogists because, in addition to the Statutory Registers from 1855 onwards, it houses the Old Parish Registers, some of which date back to the 16th century, and the declassified Census records, starting in 1841.

Computerised access is available on the Web to indexes of these records; and also to Scanned Images of those before about 1906, thus it is possible to see those actual documents in the comfort of your home anywhere in the world.

The oldest parish volume dates from 1553 and is for the parish of Errol

Errol, Perth and Kinross

Errol is a village in Perth and Kinross, Scotland about halfway between Dundee and Perth. It is one of the principal settlements of the Carse of Gowrie....

, near Perth

Perth, Scotland

Perth is a town and former city and royal burgh in central Scotland. Located on the banks of the River Tay, it is the administrative centre of Perth and Kinross council area and the historic county town of Perthshire...

.

Canongate Parish supplies the earliest parish register for the city of Edinburgh. It dates from 1564. Among records of ordinary citizens and burgesses it contains the proclamation of banns of marriage of Mary Queen of Scots and Lord Darnley. As well as royals, the building contains records of most famous Scots, for example Robert Burns

Robert Burns

Robert Burns was a Scottish poet and a lyricist. He is widely regarded as the national poet of Scotland, and is celebrated worldwide...

, David Livingstone

David Livingstone

David Livingstone was a Scottish Congregationalist pioneer medical missionary with the London Missionary Society and an explorer in Africa. His meeting with H. M. Stanley gave rise to the popular quotation, "Dr...

 and James Watt

James Watt

James Watt, FRS, FRSE was a Scottish inventor and mechanical engineer whose improvements to the Newcomen steam engine were fundamental to the changes brought by the Industrial Revolution in both his native Great Britain and the rest of the world.While working as an instrument maker at the...

.

Opposite lies the Cafe Royal, a historic public house.