The Church in Wales was disestablished and disendowed in 1920 - approaching ninety years ago.
Wales, unlike England, does not have a "State" Church; and since 1920 it has been incorrect to refer to the Church in Wales as the "Established" Church.

The Parochial Registers and Records Measure of 1978, which specifies conditions for the care of parish records of the Church of England, has no validity in Wales.

After the local government re-organisation of 1974, the Bishops of the Church in Wales asked the Public Record Office for advice on the preservation of parish records; and after due deliberation, it was agreed that the National Library of Wales and the various county record offices of Wales would become the recognised repositories for parish records. In 1976, the Church in Wales and the Clwyd County Council signed an agreement whereby the Clwyd Record Office would become the recognised repository for ecclesiastical parish records within the administrative county of Clwyd. Various conditions were agreed, for example:

• No parish register which had entries less than fifty years old would be deposited without the permission of the Bishop of St. Asaph.
• Some categories of records (such as personal correspondence, etc.) would not be made available to the public until a certain number of years had elapsed.
• The Clwyd Record Office would provide each parish with a bound facsimile of every register deposited.

The Archbishop of Wales implemented the agreement immediately, by "urging" incumbents to deposit records such as parish registers, churchwardens' accounts, terriers, faculties, church rate books and service registers. Diocesan advisers on archives were appointed to supervise the operation.

Within a short time the vast majority of surviving parish records which were more than 50 years old had been placed in the care of the (former) Clwyd Record Office - in general, those for "old" Denbighshire at Ruthin (now the Denbighshire Record Office), and those for "old" Flintshire at Hawarden (now the Flintshire Record Office). Registers for ten Clwyd parishes were placed in the National Library of Wales at Aberystwyth; and some registers for the Edeyrnion district of the "old" county of Merioneth, which had become part of Clwyd, were placed in the Gwynedd Record Office at Dolgellau.

Although the county of Clwyd ceased to exist on 31 March 1996, being replaced by four unitary authorities, the authorities of the Church in Wales (which retains ownership of all deposited registers) have instructed that the deposited registers should not be moved from their present locations.

Members of the public are not normally allowed to handle the original registers.
However, it is the policy of the Record Offices to microfilm the registers on receipt; and members of the public are expected to use copies of these microfilms, rather than the original registers, in the Record Office searchrooms.

The Flintshire and Denbighshire Record Offices, and the National Library of Wales, also have copies of all the Clwyd FHS transcriptions of the registers.