National Probate Calendar value converter

The National Probate Calendar indexes grants of probate and administration in England and Wales from 1858. An entry may give the deceased’s name, address and occupation, the date and place of death, the grant’s date and place, the estate value, and the names of executors or administrators. Relationships may also be recorded. See The National Archives’ guide to the calendar.

Read the whole entry before copying the amount. Match the address and death details to your research, then note the grant type, registry and date. Keep the original wording beside your calculation so another reader can see exactly what you converted. A short index entry should be the starting point for checking the underlying document.

Separate the death date from the grant date. GOV.UK’s search guidance explains that records are filed under the year the grant was issued. If an entry is absent from the death year, look in later years. Choose the converter’s year deliberately and include it when citing your result.

“Effects” is language associated with the deceased’s property and possessions. The National Archives’ transcription of Jane Austen’s probate record uses “Personal Estate and Effects”. That example supports reading the words together as an estate description; it does not establish what every later calendar amount included.

Keep labels such as “Effects” and “Personal estate” in your transcription. Do not silently replace them with “total wealth” or “cash inherited”. This guide does not assign a universal changeover date to the labels or assume that an older figure includes land and buildings.

For gross and net figures, HMCTS defines gross estate as the combined value of the deceased’s items. Net estate deducts debts and funeral expenses, but not Inheritance Tax. Use the label printed on your record rather than applying a modern definition retrospectively without checking the grant.

The old system used 12 pence to a shilling and 20 shillings to a pound. Divide shillings by 20 and old pence by 240, then add both to the pounds. Do not read the shillings and pence as a decimal fraction written after the pounds.

For the illustrative entry “Effects £457 17s 6d”, enter each part in its own box. Decimalisation took place on 15 February 1971. The converter uses decimal pounds from 1971; check the notation on records around the change and convert old units first if needed.

Use the official GOV.UK Find a will service to search probate records for England and Wales. Have the person’s name and an approximate death year ready. Check the image and neighbouring years when a match is uncertain, then follow the service’s instructions to obtain the grant and any available will.

Save the source reference alongside the original amount, its wording, your chosen comparison year and the data month shown here. The copied comparison link restores your inputs. If the imported ONS release changes, the tool explains that it has recalculated them.