Expert’s Choice

Audrey Collins is the records specialist, family history, at The National Archives

Although The National Archives (TNA) in Kew focuses on records from government departments and public bodies, it nevertheless offers a wealth of digital resources that can help you research private companies. TNA’s online catalogue Discovery at discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk includes information from more than 2,000 other archives, so you can use it to find records and collections held elsewhere. But before searching Discovery, it is a good idea to consult the guides ‘Companies and Businesses’ and ‘Company and Business History Records Held by Other Archives’ at national archives.gov.uk/help-with-your-research.

In Discovery you can use keywords to search records held by ‘All archives’, but you can restrict your search to ‘Other archives only’ to find records held in local and specialist archives.

Discovery’s ‘Advanced search’ option includes another very useful feature. By selecting the option ‘Search for record creators’, you can search the former National Register of Archives. This will locate collections for specific named companies, which may be scattered across several different archives. For example, records of the Cunard Steamship Company are held by three different archives, and Discovery’s search results provide a brief description of the scope of each collection.

You can also use the ‘Creator type’ dropdown list to search for records of particular categories and subcategories of business – everything from pickle manufacture to savings banks – if you are interested in researching a particular sector, rather than a named company.

The results of any kind of search include links to the contact details for the archives concerned, and detailed advice is always at hand in Discovery’s Help function: nationalarchives.gov.uk/help-withyour-research/discovery-help.