Although most wills were destroyed in 1922 when the Public Record Office burned,
the indexes to the Diocesan Wills were in a separate building and survived.
They are valuable genealogical aids because they provide the places of residence
and approximate dates of death of many deceased persons,
they alert the researcher that there may be a copy or an abstract of a Will available somewhere,
and they provide a time when property changed hands,
narrowing a search in the Registry of Deeds which might produce as much information as the Will itself.