Open a form to report problems or contribute information
We are in the process of upgrading the site to implement a content management system.
England
Many sets of records were kept for England and Wales together, so that the problems of locating them and using them are very similar in the two countries. For convenience such records are described here, rather than on the British Isles pages.
Counties
N.B. GENUKI is organised on the basis of historic counties. To find which GENUKI pages cover more modern counties and county boroughs, please see: Modern and Administrative Counties and County Boroughs.
- Archives & Libraries
- Bibliography
- Biography
- Business & Commerce
- Cemeteries
- Census
- Chronology
- Church Records
- Civil Registration
- Correctional Institutions
- Court Records
- Description & Travel
- Directories
- Emigration & Immigration
- Gazetteers
- Genealogy
- Historical Geography
- History
- Land & Property
- Language & Languages
- Law & Legislation
- Manors
- Bedfordshire
- Berkshire
- Buckinghamshire
- Cambridgeshire
- Cheshire
- Cornwall
- Cumberland
- Derbyshire
- Devon
- Dorset
- Durham
- Essex
- Gloucestershire
- Hampshire
- Herefordshire
- Hertfordshire
- Huntingdonshire
- Kent
- Lancashire
- Leicestershire
- Lincolnshire
- London
- Middlesex
- Norfolk
- Northamptonshire
- Northumberland
- Nottinghamshire
- Oxfordshire
- Rutland
- Shropshire
- Somerset
- Staffordshire
- Suffolk
- Surrey
- Sussex
- Warwickshire
- Westmorland
- Wiltshire
- Worcestershire
- Yorkshire
Archives and Libraries
- England - Archives and Libraries - links and information.
Bibliography
- G.E. Mingay. Rural life in Victorian England, Stroud, Gloucestershire, Sutton, (1998) viii, 220 p., ill. [ISBN: 0750916125]
- Medieval Source Material on the Internet by Chris Phillips.
Biography
- The Books We Own - England pages list books relating to England which volunteers are willing to search on request. See also Tips for making a request.
- Margaret Olson's Links to Genealogy Booksellers.
- Names from the Autobiography of the Rev. William Gill (b. Totnes, Devon, 1813), extracted by Mike Foster.
Business and Commerce Records
- Registration of Companies and Businesses, there are three Research Guides from The National Archives with useful background information.
- Companies House has a (beta test) database of companies and directors
Cemeteries
- For details of the graves of the rich and famous, together with biographical information, look at the Find-a-Grave (England) page.
Census
- England - Census - links and information.
Chronology
- John Owen "Jo" Smith's comprehensive Timeline covers the period 55 BC to 2001!
- Important Events in the Fourteenth Century on Jane Zatta's Chaucer website describes and illustrates some important episodes in that eventful period.
Church Records
- England - Church Records - links and information.
Civil Registration
- England - Civil Registration - links and information.
Correctional Institutions
- Australia, Transported Convicts: see these two Research Guides from The National Archives.
- Blacksheepancestors: UK Executions
- An extract from the book "Home Office 1782-1982" which includes some details about the prison service - Prisons over Two Centuries.
Court Records
- There are numerous Research Guides from The National Archives dealing with the records of various "courts of law". Also look under keywords "assize courts", "chancery (court of)", "conveyance of land", "divorce", "equity courts", "exchequer", "funds in court" and more.
- It may help in understanding the various records to read this history of the justice system.
Description and Travel
- English Heritage are responsible for the care and repair of many buildings of historic importance. The Historic England Archive (previously the National Monuments Record) is English Heritage's public archive and is the home of around 10 million items covering England's buildings, archaeology and maritime sites. English Heritage's ambitious Images of England initiative aims to put a photograph of every listed building in England on the internet.
- The Badger's Heritage website features many pen and ink drawings of churches, schools, pubs, hotels, bridges, locks, mills, cottages & villages in Berkshire, Hampshire, Middlesex, Oxfordshire, Surrey, West Sussex and Wiltshire.
- Destination England from Lonely Planet.
- There are many links on the England's Buildings webring.
- ViewFinder - an online image resource for England's history provided by Historic England.
- The England in Particular website from Common Ground encourages the study of our own localities.
Directories
- There is a terrific selection of local and trade directories spanning the period from 1750 to 1919 on the Historical Directories website.
- Sue O'Neill's searchable Trade Directory Index covers Pigot's directories of Bedfordshire, Berkshire, Buckinghamshire, Cambridgeshire, Cheshire, Cornwall, Cumberland, Co Durham, Huntingdonshire, Northamptonshire, Northumberland, Oxfordshire, Westmoreland, Wiltshire and Worcestershire for 1830, and Slater's directory of Co Durham for 1854.
- Direct Resources have provided surname indexes to several Trade Directories of around 1848.
Emigration and Immigration
- Moving Here (archived version), 200 Years of Migration to England, is a "database of digitised photographs, maps, objects, documents and audio items from 30 local and national archives, museums and libraries which record migration experiences of the last 200 years. The project has now closed but the archived web site remains.
- Letters to an Emigrant Minister 1841-1855 - Letters sent by John Stubbs of Kendal, Westmorland and his daughter and son-in-law, Mary and Thomas Williams, to his son, Reverend Thomas Stubbs, a Wesleyan Methodist Minister, in the United States of America.
- There is some very useful background information in the Research Guides from The National Archives, good keywords are 'emigration', 'immigration' and 'passport'.
Gazetteers
- England - Gazetteers - links and information.
Historical Geography
- Jimella's British Counties, Parishes, etc. for Genealogists will be of particular value to overseas researchers who are unfamiliar with our geographic divisions and naming conventions.
- The ENG-DESERTED-VILLAGES Mailing List. It has been estimated that there are over 50,000 villages and hamlets that no longer exist for a variety of reasons, ie the 14th C plagues to the English Clearances in the eastern Counties, from mass migrations for economical reasons to villages just falling into the sea! The purpose of the Mailing List is to try to find out exactly where these now-deserted places were located, which parish they were in and where any extant records are kept.
- A Topographical Dictionary of England of 1831 (Google books)
Land and Property
- There are many useful Research Guides from The National Archives - try keywords 'enclosure (land)', 'land' and 'land ownership'.
- The Harvard Law School Library Special Collections: English Deeds, Manor Rolls, and Chancery Writs.
Language and Languages
- Dave Wilton's site "Wordorigins.org" includea a page of reference links covering words, grammar and history of the English language.
- The History of the English Language website also provides links to detailed resources.
Law and Legislation
- If you want to read the full details of most UK legislation since 1800, try www.legislation.gov.uk
- For some of the legal background on Electoral Registration, this legal volume about The Representation of the People Act, 1918 may prove useful - https://archive.org/stream/representationof00frasrich
Manors
- Primary Sources: English Manorial Documents "From English Manorial Documents, Translations and Reprints from the original Sources of European History, E. P. Cheyney, tr., vol. 3, no. 5 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania, 1907), pp. 3-32". This includes examples from several parts of the country, including Essex, Durham and Norfolk.
Medical Records
- Public Health and Epidemics, this Research Guide from The National Archives, provides an interesting overview of 19th & 20th century attempts to safeguard the health of our ancestors.
- Vaccination against smallpox was compulsory in England and Wales from 1853 until 1948. A Vaccination Certificate was issued to the parents of each vaccinated child as proof that the vaccination had taken place.
Merchant Marine
- Those with mariners in their families will find these Research Guides from The National Archives see 'merchant navy' and 'merchant seamen'.
- From the National Maritime Museum - Crew Lists of the British Merchant Navy - 1915 (you can search by vessel too, scroll down.)
- The Through Mighty Seas website(*) from Tim Latham "covers the history of the merchant sailing ships of the North West of England and the Isle of Man, through the period from the late 1700s until the First World War. There are histories of over 550 ships, indexed by region, and over 70 historic photographs."
(*) the site has disappeared, the link is to an archived copy.
Migration, Internal
- A very useful guide is: A.J. Camp: My ancestors moved in England and Wales: how can I trace where they came from?, Society of Genealogists. (See SoG Bookshop)
Military History
- The Battle of Jutland was a naval encounter between the Royal Navy's Grand Fleet under Admiral Sir John Jellicoe and the Imperial German Navy's High Seas Fleet under Vice-Admiral Reinhard Scheer on 31st May to 1st June 1916. – Battle of Jutland Crew Lists Project
- A listing of 1640 men who served in British ships at the Battle of Trafalgar, compiled by the Genealogical Computing Group of the NZ Society of Genealogists.
- There is information on Nelson, napolean and the Napoleonic Wars on the Royal Museums Greenwich web site. It includes links to websites with lists of men who served at Trafalgar and officers of the Napoleonic era.
- Judith Taylor has provided listings of Officers in the New Model Army and The Marches and Campaigns of the Army taken from Anglia Rediviva (England's Recovery) by Joshua Sprigge, 1647.
- Some useful English Civil War material from Luke Knowlton.
- There is a good bibliography (see 'resources') on Soldiers and Soldiering in Britain 1750-1815
- Online database from muster rolls: The Soldier in later Medieval England
Names, Geographical
- The Domesday Book website provides details of many of the places mentioned in this historic survey of 1089.
Names, Personal
- Change of Name, this 'Changes of Name' Research Guide from The National Archives, clearly explains this often misunderstood topic.
- Names from Journals of James Boswell (1760s), extracted by Mike Foster.
- Online database from muster rolls: The Soldier in later Medieval England
Newspapers
- Richard Heaton has compiled an index of digitized newspapers for London and for the rest of England
- These pages provide links to (current) newspaper web sites in England: Online Newspapers: England
Occupations
- England - Occupations - links and information.
Politics and Government
- The US National Archives has an interesting page on the Magna Carta.
- The English Bill of Rights (1689) was the forerunner of the US Constitution.
- The Village Labourer 1760-1832: A Study in the Government of England before the Reform Bill by J.L. and Barbara Hammond (Originally published 1911, New Edition, 1920.)
Poor Houses, Poor Law etc.
- Peter Higginbotham's web site is one of the most entensive sites about Workhouses and Poor Law Unions.
- Index to Paupers in Workhouses 1861 (a 10% sample) provided by George Bell.
- There are links to many Workhouse and Poor Law sites on the Four Bears Poverty links page .
- The regime in workhouses could be very harsh as these Workhouse Rules illustrate.
Population
- The book: E.A. Wrigley and R.S. Schofield, (Eds.). The Population History of England, Cambridge Univ. Press, 1989, is the standard text on the historical demography of England, based on many years of work by the Cambridge Group for the History of Population and Social Structure. A book which draws very usefully on this research, in order to study family and community in England after the Middle Ages and before the changes brought about by the Industrial Revolution, is: P. Laslett. The World We Have Lost: Further explored, London, Routledge, 1983, 353 p.
- The Vision of Brtain site has a number of population graphs and charts.
Probate Records
- England - Probate Records - links and information.
Public Records
- See our section on Archives for various online catalogues of public records.
- The book: J. West. Village Records, Chichester, Phillimore, 1982, 248 p. provides detailed accounts of the types of document that are likely to be available, to someone wishing to research the history of a village and its population. The types of document covered are: Saxon Charters, The Domesday Survey, Manorial Court Rolls, Lay Subsidy Rolls, Inquisitions Post Mortem, Manorial Extents, Monumental Brasses, County Maps, Parish Records, Quarter Sessions Papers, Inventories, Wills, Hearth Tax Returns, Enclosure Awards and Maps, Land Tax and Tithe Records, Turnpike Trust Records, and Commercial Directories.
Schools
There are several Research Guides from The National Archives giving an excellent overview of the history of education in this country. Also look under keywords 'educational history' and 'schools'.
Statistics
- 200 Years of the Census - changes over the last 200 years as revealed by the census.
Taxation
- There are useful Research Guides from The National Archives - see keywords 'death duties (tax)', 'taxation' and 'taxes and duties'.
- The book: J.S.W. Gibson, M. Medlycott and D. Mills. Land and Window Tax Assessments, 1690-1950, Birmingham, FFHS, 1993, 52 p. provides a good description of how to interpret these early tax records, and where to find the records for each county.
Town Records
- See Markets and Fairs - a Research Guide from The National Archives.
Voting Registers
In the UK these are referred to as Electoral Registers or Electoral Rolls. In earlier times they are often known as Poll Books.
- The electoralregisters.org.uk site offers ... information about the electoral registers, electoral rolls, poll books from 1700 to the present day, how to access the registers online, how to make the most from your searches, what is available and not available, and much, much, more.
- For some of the legal background, this legal volume about The Representation of the People Act, 1918 may prove useful - https://archive.org/stream/representationof00frasrich