Free websites

This website gives access to descriptions of the archives of over 100 higher education institutions and learned societies within the Greater London area.

http://www.aim25.ac.uk

This website shows birth, marriage and death records of most counties. Not all counties are covered. 

http://www.ukbmd.org.uk/local_bmd

This website is a register of online studies of the history of particular places. Most of the entries focus on a specific parish in England.

http://www.oneplacestudy.org

British Association for Local History (BALH) offers extensive archive of their journal, The Local Historian

https://www.balh.org.uk

This website gives details of record offices and similar facilities in the British Isles. Opening hours may fluctuate, so check the latest position on the record office's own website.

http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/archon

An electronic catalogue to the holdings of more than fifty Scottish archives.

http://www.scan.org.uk

A list of sites based across the world, as ranked by Alexa’s estimate of internet traffic. This is not a measure of their usefulness for your own research. However, as the URL is included for each site, it is easy to check whether there are some that you have not yet visited that might be of help.

http://www.genealogyintime.com/articles/top-100-genealogy-websites-of-2015-page02.html

This fully-searchable website covers notable people and events during the Civil Wars and other highlights of the history of the British Isles from 1638 to 1660.

http://bcw-project.org

A virtual reference library of genealogical information relating to the England, Scotland, Wales, Ireland, Isle of Man and the Channel Islands.

http://www.genuki.org.uk

This free site can help locate places of interest across the world.  Their Street view facility can often help in identifying specific houses and discovering whether one mentioned in a census schedule is still standing.

By using the option to calculate the shortest walking distance between two places, you can usually find out how far a person had to go, either on foot or horseback in past centuries. 

http://www.google.co.uk/intl/en_uk/earth

Online tutorial by The National Archives to help people who want to read and transcribe the various scripts used between 1500 and 1800. Copies of original documents with different levels of difficulty provide opportunities to practise your new skills.

http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/palaeography

Over 300,000 images of England's built heritage.

http://www.imagesofengland.org.uk

Online tutorial for those wishing to read documents written in Latin 1086-1733. Includes guidance on the differences between the language in that period and Classical Latin.

http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/latin/beginners

The Lost Cousins newsletter is usually published fortnightly. It provides a variety of articles, news items and links of use to family historians.

http://www.lostcousins.com

History and other details of such institutions in England and Wales. The contents are based on a survey carried out in 1844 and also later sources sometimes extending into the twenty-first century. It can be searched by the name of the institution or by the region in which it operated.

http://studymore.org.uk/4_13_ta.htm

Over 800 podcasts hosted by the Institute for Historical Research. The topics covered can be filtered by period, geographical area, history type or event. In many cases abstracts and other material accompanying the talks can also be found.

http://www.history.ac.uk/podcasts

Over 86,000 family history research articles. You can search for topics such as particular places, types of sources and research methods. Users are encouraged to share their knowledge with others by writing fresh articles and augmenting ones that are already online. The site is well-stocked with maps, videos and illustrations.

https://familysearch.org/learn/wiki/en/Main_Page

This forum focuses on the British Isles and has attracted over 243,000 members and over 5.5 million posts. As well as submitting questions and adding answers or comments to those put by other people, you can search all previous posts and responses by entering a word or phrase and filtering by criteria such as counties.

http://www.rootschat.com

Encyclopaedia with over 5.4 million articles published in English. Anyone can consult or edit Wikipedia, provided they observe the rules that apply to changes and producing new articles.

The references for statements on the site are mainly secondary sources rather than original documents. Wikipedia is not perfect, complete or the last word on any subject. However, its range of coverage is enormous and if you spot an error it is not difficult to correct. Articles are acceptable only if the subject meets Wikipedia's standards of notability. If you write an article about a person who meets these standards your contribution may well soar to near the top of global search engine lists for their name.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page

Extensive and well-illustrated information about workhouses throughout England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland.

http://www.workhouses.org.uk