I have just started researching a new tree. I was given the names of both the parents and one Christian name of the grandmother on the paternal side and the full name of the grandfather on the maternal side.
I began by going into the www.ancestry.co.uk beta records. These are records that they are testing to see useful how people find them. They are the birth, marriages and death records in UK ranging from 1835 to 1983. The records show which quarter the data is from. It has the volume and the page number of the records and the district it was recorded in. So the page image you see will have many names on them which you search to see if the name you are looking for is amongst them. It is time consuming, but well worth the effort when you find a match!
So I started with one of the parents names and checked to see when they were born. If you have a rough idea of the year then you might be lucky enough to go to the correct year first of all and get immediate success! Once you have the birth record you then have the mother's maiden name. (At least you do after about 1915.. not quite sure when the records started showing the mother's maiden name.)
Then the search starts all over again with the new name! If you know the spouse then you can look for the marriage records, find the one that tallies with the two surnames and the region where you think they lived. Now you have one Christian name: look for the marriage record of the other spouse, matching the two tallying surnames and the volume and page and area where the records were registered; now you have the second Christian name. (ie. find one, then cross check it to find the spouses Christian name.)
Then you do the same to find the death year. I have not concentrated on this aspect yet as I am more concerned with getting the tree growing. I figure I can do that research at a later date. However I did look for the death of one grandparent as I had been given the clue that she had died when her daughter was in her early teens. I found this evidence.
To see how I found the death of my great grandfather by looking in the beta death records go to Research page. section 8.
I have found the birth date of the two parents and the surname of each of their mother's.
I have found the birth, marriage and death date of the mother's mother.
I have found the parents of the mother's mother and their marriage date. I have not found the Christian name of this great-grandmother since the marriage records were there for the male (I got his Christian name) but when I attempted to cross check, the records were not available for that quarter of that year. Hence no Christian name for the woman. I think I have found the dates of their births but am not certain yet.
I have found two marriages for the father's father. So I have the name of two wives for him. More checking to do on this aspect yet.