Hi twigg,
If I understand your post correctly, you found the two brothers in the baptism registers and then contacted the reg office for the certificates? As cardiff says, the two are not the same thing. In order to find the birth certificates, the register office needs a set of reference numbers (the name of the registration district, year and quarter in which the birth was registered, and the volume number and page number where the registration can be found). They will not do a search for you just using name and year.
This information can be found in the indexes that cardiff mentions. One place to search the indexes is
www.freebmd.org.uk . They are transcribing the indexes - they have a huge number of them done, but not all. You can also search the original images of the index pages for free at
www.ancestry.co.uk. These are not searchable - they are just arranged alphabetically and chronologically so you have to search through each possible year looking for the name.
Once you have found the index entry and the corresponding reference numbers you can write to the relevant registration office and get them to issue you a certificate.
Hope this helps you. You are right that the birth may not have been registered, but hopefully you will find them.
MJP
