The three big subscription databases — Ancestry, FindMyPast, and the British Newspaper Archive — between them hold an almost bewildering quantity of material.

Census returns, parish registers, military records, trade directories, electoral rolls, and millions of digitised newspaper pages, stretching back centuries. For anyone researching local history in the UK, they are essential tools.

They are also quite different from each other. Knowing what each one does well will save you money, time, and the frustration of looking for something in the wrong place.

Ancestry: the broadest collection

Ancestry is the largest genealogical database in the world, and for many people starting out in local history, it will be the first port of call.

Its UK collection includes the census returns from 1841 to 1921, birth, marriage, and death records from the General Register Office (from 1837), a substantial collection of parish registers, military service records, and much more besides.

Its great strength is breadth.

If you are trying to trace a specific individual or family across multiple record types, Ancestry lets you do much of that without leaving the site. The search function is reasonably good, though it is worth knowing that AI transcription errors might mean searches don’t always turn up all the relevant sources. Always check the original image rather than relying on the transcribed text.

Ancestry’s weakness, from a local history perspective, is that it is built primarily for genealogists rather than historians. Its emphasis is on tracing family trees rather than understanding communities. You can work around this, but it takes some adjustment.

FindMyPast: the specialist’s choice for UK records

FindMyPast is a British company, and it shows.

Its UK collection is, in some areas, more comprehensive than Ancestry’s — particularly for parish records, non-conformist registers, and local and regional collections that Ancestry hasn’t prioritised. It has an excellent collection of school records, including many school admission registers and log books that are unavailable elsewhere online. It also holds the 1939 Register, the wartime equivalent of a census taken on the eve of the Second World War, which is invaluable for twentieth-century research.

Its newspaper archive, though not as large as the British Newspaper Archive, is worth checking — some titles appear in one and not the other.

FindMyPast’s interface is slightly less polished than Ancestry’s, which puts some people off. It is worth persisting. The depth of its UK collections more than compensates for a search function that occasionally requires more patience than you’d like.

For UK local history specifically, FindMyPast is often the better choice for anything that takes you beyond the main census and civil registration records.

The British Newspaper Archive: a world of its own

The British Newspaper Archive is a different beast from the other two. It is not a genealogical database. It is a digitised collection of local and regional newspapers from across the UK, searchable by keyword, date range, newspaper title, and location.

The collection now runs to over forty million pages and covers titles from the early eighteenth century to the late twentieth. For local history, this is transformative. Before the British Newspaper Archive, finding a reference to a specific person or event in a local newspaper required knowing which paper covered the area, knowing roughly when the event occurred, and then sitting in a library working through microfilm reel by microfilm reel. Now, in many cases, you can find the same reference in minutes.

The results can be extraordinary.

Inquests, elections, fires, floods, court cases, public meetings, school prize-givings, accidents at work — local newspapers recorded all of it, in far more detail than any official record.

It is worth being aware of its limitations. Not every title has been digitised, and coverage is uneven; some areas and periods are well represented, others much less so. Keyword searches are only as good as the original typesetting and the OCR software used to digitise it, which means that some words are misread and some articles are effectively unfindable by search. Browsing by date and title, rather than searching by keyword, is sometimes the more reliable approach.

Which should you subscribe to?

For most local historians, the practical answer is all three — but not necessarily all at once.

Ancestry and FindMyPast both offer free trials, and the British Newspaper Archive offers a limited number of free searches per month. Starting with free access will give you a sense of which collection is most relevant to your specific research before you commit.

If budget is a constraint, check whether your local library offers free access. Many county library services provide free Ancestry or FindMyPast access to cardholders, either on library premises or remotely. It is one of the best-kept secrets in local history research, and well worth a phone call to your local branch to find out.

The records are there. The tools to find them have never been better. The only thing left is to start looking.

Even in the age of the internet they’re an essential part of a local historian’s tool kit. Here are 5 that you should think of adding to your library.

01 THE CLASSIC STARTING POINT

The Making of the English Landscape

W. G. Hoskins (1955; Penguin revised ed. 1985)

The book that founded British local history as a serious discipline. Hoskins taught readers to treat the landscape itself — field systems, hedgerows, lanes, village forms — as a primary document. Half a century on, it remains the essential manifesto for anyone who wants to read the past in the world around them.

02 PRACTICAL HANDBOOK

Local History: A Handbook for Beginners

Philip Riden (2nd ed., 1998)

The most directly practical guide written specifically for British researchers. Riden walks through every major source type — parish registers, census returns, tithe awards, enclosure maps, quarter sessions, trade directories — explaining where to find them, what they contain, and how to use them critically.

03 RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

The Craft of Research

Wayne C. Booth, Gregory G. Colomb & Joseph M. Williams (4th ed., 2016)

Though an academic book, this is the finest general guide to formulating questions, evaluating sources, building arguments, and presenting evidence clearly. Whilst not targeted at historians, its principles apply equally to any archive or county record office. Read it alongside Riden to sharpen both your methods and your thinking.

04 NAVIGATING THE ARCHIVES

English Local History: An Introduction

Kate Tiller (1992; revised ed. 2002)

Tiller’s guide is essential reading for both new and experienced local historians. It covers the different periods of English history and the types of sources that are available for each.

05 MAPS & VISUAL SOURCES

Maps for Local History

Brian Paul Hindle (1988)

A systematic guide to the cartographic record of England and Wales, covering estate maps, enclosure and tithe maps, Ordnance Survey series, town plans, and transport maps. Hindle explains not only how to find and read these sources but also how to interpret their silences and distortions — every map was made by someone with a purpose.