Local and family history sites: national and Cheshire-specific sources

We think you will find the following links useful, but please note that Cheshire East Council accepts no responsibility for external sites or their contents.

S = Subscription service brought to you free of charge by Cheshire Libraries.

National sources

Archives and public records

• General Register Offices for England and Wales
• General Register Office, Northern Ireland
• General Register Office, Scotland
• Archives Wales
• National Archives, Kew
• National Archives of Ireland
• National Archives of Scotland
• Public Record Office of Northern Ireland

Census returns

• Census for Scotland
• Census for England & Wales
• 1901/1911 census for Ireland household returns and ancillary records for the censuses of Ireland of 1901 and 1911 (all 32 counties)

Family and local history

• 1939 register from Find my Past S Available only in libraries
• Ancestry S Available only in libraries. The largest online collection of family history records in the UK
• BBC family history
• BMD Registers Gives access to various unpublished registers from 1534-1865; usually providing the only record of a particular event
• Britain from Above
• British Newspaper Archive S Millions of pages from British and Irish newspapers, including 1000s from the Victorian period, WW1 and WW2. Articles include births, marriages, deaths and obituaries, as well as local court reports and criminal trials. Visit the library to register for free. Only available to use via a library computer, although saved searches can be accessed on any device
• Burke's Peerage Historical guide to the UK titled and landed families
• Commonwealth War Graves Commission
• Cyndi's List Useful starting point for the genealogist
• Directory of local history and allied societies UK-wide directory from Local History Online
• Family Search.org  A service provided by the Church of Jesus Christ Of Latter-Day Saints, including the International Genealogical Index (IGI) and 1881 Census for England and Wales. It is possible to search for Cheshire-specific records by collection, for example, school, workhouse, probate and parish records.
• Find my Past  S Available only in libraries. Over 1.6 billion family history records, including the 1921 Census records
• Free BMD Transcriptions of the civil registration indexes of births, marriages and deaths for England and Wales from 1837-1983
• Free UK Genealogy
• Genuki UK & Ireland Genealogy sites
• Historical directories A searchable database of UK trade directories from the University of Leicester's Special Collections Online
• MyHeritage 
• Scotland's People Provides access to statutory birth, marriage and death registers as well as old parish registers. Also provides a free search of wills and testaments, as well as coats of arms
• Society of Genealogists
• Suffragette Collection S Available only in libraries. Collection of records from The National Archives compiled by Find my Past
• UK BMD Online transcriptions of UK births, marriages, deaths and censuses. Information given about other online resources
• WikiTree  Free worldwide resource. The G2G forum helps find answers to your genealogy questions.

Cheshire sources

• Cheshire Archives and Local Studies
• Cheshire births, marriages and deaths online from 1837. Site incomplete
• Cheshire Collection on Find my Past S Available only in libraries
• Cheshire Local History Association
• Cheshire's Tithe Maps Online
• Family History Society of Cheshire
• Revealing Cheshire's Past Access to the County Sites and Monuments Record (SMR), the database of all the known archaeological sites and finds in Cheshire, Halton and Warrington.
• Silkmen Archives The official Macclesfield Town Football Club archives

Images and maps

• Cheshire Image Bank Digital images of Cheshire
• University of Manchester image collection
• Viewfinder Image resource for England's history from Historic Britain

Page last reviewed: 18 March 2024