England

• England - Archives and Libraries - links and information.

• 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.
• Margaret Olson's Links to Genealogy Booksellers (archived copy).
• 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.

• Names from the Autobiography of the Rev. William Gill (b. Totnes, Devon, 1813), extracted by Mike Foster.

• Registration of Companies and Businesses, there are three Research Guides from The National Archives with useful background information.
• Companies House has a database of companies and directors

• For details of the graves of the rich and famous, together with biographical information, look at the Find-a-Grave (England) page.

• England - Census - links and information.

• John Owen "Jo" Smith's comprehensive Timeline covers the period 55 BC to 2001!
• Fourteenth Century - A Brief Chronology of Chaucer's Life and Times.

Sites to help you find current churches.

• Church of England  - A church near you
• Congregational Federation, note that the majority of Congregational churches became part of the United Reformed church
• Roman Catholic - Organised by diocese
• United Reformed church
• Baptist Union of Great Britain church finder
• Find a Quaker meeting
• Search for your local Methodist church or community

• England - Church Records - links and information.

• England - Civil Registration - links and information.

• 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.

• 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 (in England and Wales).

• 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 (Internet Archive snapshot from 2018) 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.

• There is a terrific selection of local and trade directories spanning the period from 1750 to 1919 on the Historical Directories website.
• Direct Resources have provided surname indexes to several Trade Directories of around 1848.

• 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'.

• England - Gazetteers - links and information.

• England - Genealogy - links and information.

• Jimella's (Internet Archived page) 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)

• England - History - links and information.

• 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.
• For a general search for information on England's historic sites and buildings, including images of listed buildings, try the Heritage Gateway

• Dave Wilton's site "Wordorigins.org" includes a page of reference links entitled Etymological Resources & Links.
• The History of the English Language website also provides links to detailed resources.

• If you want to read the full details of most UK legislation since 1800, try www.legislation.gov.uk
• If seeking records of Police Forces, try this substantial PDF download from the Open University: A Guide to the Archives of the Police Forces of England and Wales
• 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/details/representationof00frasrich?view=theater

• The National Archives' project to update the Manorial Documents Register is now complete. Note particularly the links on that page to the TNA guide and to the A-Z list of manors. Quoting the TNA guide: The Manorial Documents Register (MDR) is maintained by The National Archives, on behalf of the Master of the Rolls, as a record of the whereabouts of manorial documents. It is not a register of title to manorial lordships and we do not collect or record this type of information.
• 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.

• England - Maps - links and information.

• 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.

• 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
  • Research guide C1: The Merchant Navy: Tracing people: Crew lists, agreements and official logs
  • 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.

• 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)

This section is, approximately, in reverse chronological order.

• Note this information on obtaining service records from the Ministry of Defence.
• A modest number of names appear here but the story applies to many who are not named - the 1945 forced march from Stalag VIIIB (344), in Lamsdorf, Upper Silesia (now Łambinowice, Poland) - https://www.lamsdorflongmarch.com/
• No WWI researcher should miss out a look through The Long Long Trail web site.
• Some WWI service records for soldiers born before 1901 were (in 2014 at least) still held by the MOD. A Freedom of Information request produced a list of names (and service numbers) involved. The FOI response and attachments (8 of them, in the form of spreadsheets) can be see at FOI responses released by MOD: week commencing 1 December 2014
• If your ancestor was an Army Chaplain, then the Chaplains museum may have something for you. Note in particular this page explaining the details recorded on the WWI Chaplain Interview Record cards.
• There is a useful (interactive) map of WWI wrecks in the English Channel described in this BBC article. You can, of course go directly to the Forgotten Wrecks web site.
• 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.
  Caveat: That list was compiled in 1988, further sources have become available so it is now incomplete. Better to use the next ...
• The National Archives have a database of Trafalgar Ancestors.
• 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 (the internet archive, the original pages have been removed) Soldiers and Soldiering in Britain 1750-1815
• Online database from muster rolls: The Soldier in later Medieval England

• The Domesday Book website provides details of many of the places mentioned in this historic survey of 1089.

• 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

• 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 A-K - England L-Z

• England - Occupations - links and information.

• 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.)

• 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.

• 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. Note the site has undergone changes, you may need to hunt!

• England - Probate Records - links and information.

• 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.

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'.

• Fashion History Museums & Galleries: Fashion-Era.
• Clothing of the 18th century
• (Internet Archive snapshot from 2016) Village Games by Colonel Alex Johnson describes games which Alex remembers from his childhood in the 1920s and 30s. Although the names of the games are those used in North-East England, most of these games were played throughout the country.
• The Children's Society – Hidden Lives – includes anonymised case files

• See: Family History and Genealogy Societies: England.

• 200 Years of the Census - changes over the last 200 years as revealed by the census.

• Here are three useful sources of reading about Land Taxes
  • https://www.familysearch.org/en/wiki/England_Land_Tax_Redemption_(National_Institute)
  • https://cdn.nationalarchives.gov.uk/documents/the-land-tax-1692-1963.pdf
  • https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_Tax_(England)
• 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.

• See Markets and Fairs - a Research Guide from The National Archives.

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/details/representationof00frasrich?view=theater