A WEBSITE designed to provide a shortcut for those researching their family tree has been extended.

Durham Records Online, already believed to be the most comprehensive family history site in Britain, has added a further 20,000 records to its database.

Over the past week, Census returns dating back to 1851 from Conside and Knitsley, as Consett was known at the time, along with Benfieldside and the 1861 records for the Durham City parish of St Giles, including Gilesgate and Belmont, have been added to the site.

Also placed on the site have been the marriage records of Hutton House St Peter and St Paul dating back to 1848, the earliest documented Catholic marriages in Easington district.

The site - www.durhamrecordsonline.com - has been compiled over the past ten years by author and historian Tony Whitehead.

The 52-year-old, formerly from Seaham, believes his site allows amateur genealogists to research in one day what would previously have taken them a year.