Links - genealogy and social history


Finding out about things from the comfort of your living room (and without having having to spend hours in a library) is one of the major impacts which the internet has had on people's lives.

A popular way of making use of this potential is through the use of the internet in connection with genealogy. The more that information has been available through the internet, the more popular genealogy has become - and the more popular genealogy has become, the more reason there has been for information to be made available.


  • Ancestry.co.uk
    • The Ancestry.co.uk website offers a number of services (many of which require some form of payment) including the ability to search a number of historic telephone directories.

  • British Library, Tracing Living People
    • British Library webpage which focusses on methods to use when attempting to trace and locating living people.

  • Cyndi's List
    • Cyndi's List is a genealogy links website which has a vast number of links listed and subdivided across a large number of catagories.

  • FamilyRecords.gov.uk
    • The FamilyRecords.gov.uk website aims to help people find UK government records and other sources needed as part of family history research.

  • Family Tree
    • The Family Tree website includes a selection of useful downloadable resources and advice pages on topics relating to genealogy.

  • Genealogy Links.net
    • Genealogy Links.net provides a large range of links for genealogy and related topics.

  • GenesReunited
    • GenesReunited is a genealogy and family history searching website which is provided by the same company as FriendsReunited.

  • Historical Directories
    • Historical Directories is University of Leicester project which offers digital reproductions of local and trade directories for England and Wales covering the time period between 1750 and 1919.

  • The Advertising Archives
    • The Advertising Archives's services include a UK based website which features a large number of historic adverts which can be viewed online.

  • the National Archives
    • The National Archives is a government department containing 900 years of historic records, many of which can be accessed and searched through online.

  • ViewFinder
    • ViewFinder is an online resource provided by English Heritage which enables searching and viewing over quarter of a million of the photographs from the National Monuments Record.