Around Britain
As family historians flock to RootsTech London, Jonathan Scott surveys the offerings from the capital’s archives
Trace your London ancestors among millions of records
Every few pages, or so it seems, in the Victorian popular history Old and New London, there’s a woodcut of a village green, a coaching inn, a rural tollgate, a crossroads or a church, all nestled within chapters bearing names of streets or areas: Tottenham Court Road, Chelsea, Eltham or Islington, for example. It makes you realise that the urban expanse we know today is a comparatively recent development. Rewind a couple of centuries, and much of what is now Greater London was a rural patchwork surrounding a walled medieval city (you can see all this for yourself via the digitised volumes at british-history.ac.uk/ search/series/old-new-london).
Once you find a Londoner in your tree you need to pin down where they lived. In a city with so many inhabitants, knowing the parish that your ancestors belonged to can be the key to unlocking their records. The vast collection of parish registers on ancestry.co.uk has transformed research in the capital, but it’s still worth getting to grips with London parishes and genuki.org. uk/big/eng/LND/parishes is a good place to start. Land tax records, and other rates and assessments, many on Ancestry, can also help. If you manage to get back to the late 17th century then hearth tax records for London can be searched at gams.uni-graz.at/ context:htx listing not only those who could, but also those who could not pay.
From 1841 to 1911, censuses can not only reveal the household,
‘One of the first jobs is pinning lived’ down where your ancestor
but also provide information about their neighbours, street and wider community. Once you know where your ancestors lived, visit booth.lse.ac.uk to view the maps created by Charles Booth in the late 19th century. He sent researchers across the city to record the class of inhabitants for each street.
When you know where your relation lived, it’s time to find out where records relating to that area survive. Depending on the year, and the type of record, there may be several research venues to consider. Local borough archives will each have their own unique sources, such as the one-off census of 85 households in Ealing that was carried out in 1599, recording names, ages, relationships and occupations.
The Principal Archive
The London Metropolitan Archives (LMA) is the largest, being the principal local government repository for Greater London and the City of London. Many of the most important genealogical resources here have been digitised by Ancestry, including parish registers back to 1558, churchwardens’ accounts, poor rates and the records of the
overseers of the poor.
Other LMA highlights on Ancestry include City of London and Tower Hamlets cemetery registers, a vast collection of electoral registers (1832–1965), a run of city directories, and all sorts of school records (explore the full range at bit.ly/LMArecords).
Occupational resources at the LMA include records of the trade guilds or livery companies of the City of London, which include apprenticeship, freedom and quarterage records (also check londonroll.org, a database of names compiled from guild and livery records in London). There are also the registers of the Hand-in-Hand and Sun fireinsurance offices, with the name, address and trade of thousands of customers. These insurance policies, which stretch back to the 18th century, have been indexed and added to LMA’s catalogue ( search.lma.gov.uk).
Other Collections
While our directory on page 81 includes some of the smaller borough archives and local history libraries within the bounds of the M25 there are a number of other archives in London that may prove useful. Aim25.com lets you search over 150 London archives such as the Marylebone Cricket Club and the Women’s Library at the London School of Economics. Keep in mind that many small archives are by appointment only so always check online before visiting. Many records may also survive
in county collections in Essex, Kent and Surrey. Search local online catalogues or try discovery. nationalarchives.gov.uk.
Westminster Archives is also a major resource for the capital holding parish registers for the City of Westminster not available at LMA or Ancestry (they are on findmypast. co.uk). The archive also holds one of the UK’s largest collections of theatrical material.
The library at the Society of Genealogists ( sog.org.uk) also has many London resources and some of its indexes, including its marriage licence and London will indexes, are on Findmypast. What’s online varies a great deal from archive to archive. Some have catalogues, indexes, databases and images, whereas others have little more than contact details and opening times.
Online Resources
As well as Ancestry and Findmypast there are dozens of websites useful for London research. Some borough councils offer online burial searches from local cemeteries, and records from many London cemeteries are now available on deceasedonline.com.
Make sure you click through to ‘local history’ pages – not just family history – as these often contain details of useful sources and ongoing projects, such as the Lewisham Memorials Wiki ( lewishamwarmemorials. wikidot.com), which has data from memorials across the old metropolitan boroughs of Lewisham and Deptford.
Other useful sites include archivesforlondon.org, londonsscreen archives.org.uk and collage. cityoflondon.gov.uk, a window to more than 250,000 images and photographs from collections held by the LMA and the Guildhall Art Gallery. A fascinating feature at bit.ly/CollagePictureMap allows you to find images of streets and buildings that no longer exist.