Best websites for London resesarch
Familiarise yourself with the city’s top family history pages
Ancestry ancestry.co.uk
Ancestry’s relationship with the London Metropolitan Archives makes it the main subscription website for anyone researching London kin. The collection ranges from parish registers to wills, tax records, electoral registers, school admissions and Poor Law records. Many libraries and archives offer free access.
British History online british-history.ac.uk
Includes Calendars of Close Rolls (1272-1509), Calendars of State Papers Domestic (15091704), Victoria County History for Middlesex, 16th century London maps and lots more.
British Library Maps bl.uk/ maps
As well as Goad’s Fire Insurance maps for the City of London, the British Library website includes many maps for the Capital, including one mapping East London’s Jewish population.
British Newspaper Archive
britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk Includes The East London Observer (18571879), The Middlesex Chronicle (1860-1945), the North London News (1860-1895), the South London Chronicle (1859-1878), the Shoreditch Observer (1857-1915) and the Tower Hamlets and East End Local Advertiser (1866-1870). Also available on Findmypast.
Charles Booth’s London booth.lse.ac.uk
This attractive website enables you to look not only at Booth’s ‘poverty maps’ but also at the accompanying notebooks.
COLLAGE collage.cityoflondon.gov.uk
Over 250,000 images of London from LMA and Guildhall Art Gallery.
Deceased Online deceasedonline.com
A growing database for British cemetery records; up to 75 years from date; includes London material.
Findmypast findmypast.co.uk
Westminster collection includes parish registers, rate books and Poor Law records, plus London apprenticeship abstracts (1442-1875), Greater London Burial Index, Bethlem Hospital records (1683-1932) and Boyd’s Inhabitants of London (1200-1946).
Hearth Tax Online hearthtax.org.uk
These records take you back to the Great Fire of London in 1666. Usefully, London Hearth Tax records often included occupation.
Ideal Homes www.ideal-homes.org.uk
Photographs, maps and short histories of the six south- east London boroughs.
Music Halls
royalholloway.ac.uk/ drama/ Music-hall/ index. asp A searchable list of entertainers from 1865-1890, stating the role, date and location of a performance.
Old Bailey Online oldbaileyonline.org
Searchable transcripts of trials from 1678-1913 useful for those whose ancestors were caught up in this court system not only as criminals, but also as victims and witnesses.
Locating London locatinglondon.org
Search a range of 18th century digital resources against John Rocque’s London map of 1746 (see step by step guide).
London Lives 1690 to 1800 londonlives.org
Fantastic free resource for anyone researching 18th century London ancestors. Search the large database or browse through a fascinating range of documents.
London’s Pulse wellcomelibrary.org/ moh
Learn about the health of London’s various communities using the Medical Officer of Health reports for London 1848-1972.
The National Archives discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk
Useful because the Discovery database can be searched not only for the holdings of TNA, but also for other archives, and there are many references to individuals.