Record Atlas
200 FamilySearch collections · 10 archives · 2,845 places · 969–2024

United Kingdom

Where the records of United Kingdom are, who holds them, and what it costs to look. 867,426,839 indexed records reachable through FamilySearch alone.

Where to start in United Kingdom

2 of the 10 checked sources here can be opened tonight. 2are an index with no images. 6are paid or part-paid. 2are catalogue cards or paper in a building — a letter, not a click. On top of that, 9 worldwide services reach United Kingdom without a subscription.

Write to The National Archives — Discovery, General Register Office (England and Wales), National Records of Scotland, PRONI — Public Record Office of Northern Ireland, ScotlandsPeople for what is not online. FamilySearch has 200 collections covering it, running 969–2024, 867,426,839 indexed records. 3 pieces of this ground are mapped for jurisdiction, so the atlas can say whose archive held it in a given year.

2,845 places placed, 72 volumes walked. Open United Kingdom on the map, or tell us what is missing.

Whose archive this ground was

Record regions mapped in United Kingdom — which empire held the ground, and therefore which archive holds its paper.

The archives

  • Bristol Archives onsite Bristol, England

    The city record office for Bristol: Church of England parish registers for the Bristol parishes, plus the city's own papers. The registers themselves are NOT online here — they are filmed on Ancestry, behind a subscription. What this office does do is read an entry for you: a seven-part enquiry about one 1828 marriage register entry was answered in nine days, in full, FREE, by staff who had viewed the record. Their quoted research service is £13 for up to half an hour and was not charged. The reply also corrected a surname spelling that two index sites had both transcribed the same way, and volunteered a later record that had not been asked about. Worth writing to.

  • The National Archives — Discovery mixed Kew, London, United Kingdom

    The catalogue of the UK National Archives and some 2,500 other British archives. The catalogue is free; downloads are often charged.

  • Findmypast paid

    Commercial. The strongest British and Irish collection, including parish registers licensed from diocesan archives and the 1921 census of England and Wales. BT 27 IS NOT ONE FORM AND ITS COLUMNS ARE NOT A CONSTANT. The outward passenger lists were re-drawn across the series, so a field present in one piece proves nothing about another and the era has to be checked before a row is planned around it. Sampled by the Luwinski archive: the 1907 form has NO «last address in the United Kingdom» column at all and buckets ages by nationality instead; the 1937 and 1939 form — printed «P.M. 21», columns (1)–(9) — carries last UK address at (6), country of last permanent residence at (8) and country of intended future permanent residence at (9); a 1951 piece is a typed US military transport manifest filed inside BT 27 with none of the Board of Trade form left. ACROSS EVERY REVISION SEEN, none gives an address in the DESTINATION country — the finest is a country and nothing below it, so «where in Australia did they settle» is not a question this series answers.

  • FreeBMD / FreeREG / FreeCEN index

    Volunteer transcriptions of English and Welsh civil registration, parish registers and censuses. Free, an index only, and not complete.

  • FreeREG index

    Volunteer transcriptions of English and Welsh parish registers — baptisms, marriages and burials — free and with no account. An INDEX ONLY: there are no images, and coverage is per-parish and very uneven, so it must be measured before an absence in it means anything. Two measurements from the D'Arcy archive: the Berkeley, Gloucestershire transcript is a thirty-year seventeenth-century fragment, every result falling between 1653 and 1677, so it can test one generation and no more; and for the Bristol non-parochial chapels it holds four registers and 1,551 records in total. A control surname should be run in the same parish before any nil result from it is quoted.

  • Gloucestershire Archives onsite Gloucester, England

    The county record office for Gloucestershire, holding the parish registers for the Vale of Berkeley and the whole county. IT DOES NOT ANSWER RESEARCH ENQUIRIES — asked in September 2026 for one marriage entry, a Senior Archives Assistant replied «I'm afraid we don't offer any kind of research service» and pointed to two other routes: the Gloucestershire Family History Society, whose volunteers do lookups, and Ancestry, which holds the filmed county registers including marriages and banns to 1938. Free access to those films is available inside a Gloucestershire library or through the society. So: a place to visit or to send a volunteer to, not a place to write to.

  • General Register Office (England and Wales) paid Southport, United Kingdom

    The official index to English and Welsh civil registration from 1837. The index is a reference, not a record — you order the certificate, and it is charged.

  • National Records of Scotland mixed Edinburgh, United Kingdom

    The archive behind ScotlandsPeople. Kirk session records, sasines, services of heirs and the estate papers — the Scottish sources that are not births, marriages and deaths.

  • PRONI — Public Record Office of Northern Ireland mixed Belfast, United Kingdom

    The record office for the six counties, and the reason Ulster research is not as badly burnt as the rest of Ireland: PRONI held copies and estate papers that were never in the Four Courts. Church records, wills, valuation revision books.

  • ScotlandsPeople paid Edinburgh, United Kingdom

    The official Scottish records — statutory registers, old parish registers, censuses and wills. Pay-per-view credits, and the only lawful route to most of it.

And 12 worldwide providers reach United Kingdom too — the full list.

200 FamilySearch collections

Grouped by the ground each one covers, nationwide. A free account opens the images; some are restricted to a Family History Centre.

United Kingdom — nationwide 200

103 more collections, contributed

A directory David assembled, sorted by what kind of record each one is. Read this differently from the rest of the page. The descriptions are his, not an archive's catalogue, and nobody here has opened the volumes behind them. Every link was tried on 2026-09-20 and answered; the ones that did not are not listed.

Church and parish registers 37
Civil registration and vital records 3
Censuses and population lists 4
Probate, land and notarial 65
Military and wartime 4
Immigration and emigration 3
Cemeteries and burials 4
Jewish and minority 1

2,845 places, 72 volumes

The 250 carrying the most collections are listed; 2,595 more are in United Kingdom and on the map. Every place lists them all.

Every country · The map