Where Do I Even Start? A Complete Beginner’s First Steps
Fascination with local history catches many by surprise.
I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve been told, “I wish I’d paid more attention to history at school.” Sometimes they’re talking about the grand events and famous figures. But often it’s because their curiosity is ignited by a strange story about their workplace or what their great grandparents did during the war. Maybe they notice something odd in the architecture of a nearby church, or, after a few pints, find themselves drawn to the old photographs of their town decorating the wall of their local pub.
Whatever the cause, now they want to know more.
The problem is that finding ‘more’ can feel a tad overwhelming. Local history involves everything from archives and databases to indecipherable handwriting, Latin (if you go back far enough), and maps that don’t look like maps. In addition, there are huge gaps in the sources and the ever-present kernel of self-doubt about interpreting the scattered and messy evidence: “what if I got this wrong?”
The answer, almost always, is simpler than you think.
Start with a question, not a subject
The single most useful thing a beginner can do is narrow down. Not “I want to research the history of my town” — that is a lifetime’s work, and the sheer scale of it will stop you before you start. Instead, ask a specific question. Who lived in my house in 1881? What was this street called before it was called this? When was this church built, and why here? What did people in this village do for work in 1850?
A specific question gives you a target. It tells you which records to look at and which ones to ignore. It is the difference between wandering into a vast library with no plan and walking in knowing you want the second shelf from the left.
Good questions tend to be about people, places, or events. They tend to be answerable — at least in part — from surviving records. And they tend to lead somewhere interesting, because one answer almost always generates three more questions.
Start online
The good news for beginners is that an enormous amount of material is now freely available online. Before you visit an archive or subscribe to a database, spend some time with what’s free. This is where I always start, and you can do it anywhere; on your phone or laptop, in a café or during the commute to work.
Wikipedia is underrated as a starting point. A well-maintained article will give you a valuable outline, and often point you towards sources worth investigating Use the links in the footnotes: they’re a goldmine for beginners. It won’t be the end of your research, but it can usefully frame the beginning.
The Vision of Britain website (www.visionofbritain.org.uk) is a remarkable free resource. It maps census data going back to 1801, includes historical travel writing and gazetteers, and allows you to track how a place changed over time. An hour spent here will repay itself many times over.
The National Archives website (www.nationalarchives.gov.uk) has a research portal that will tell you what records exist for almost any topic or place, and where they are held. It won’t give you the documents themselves — for most things you’ll need to visit or subscribe to a database — but it will tell you what’s out there.
Talk to people
Local history societies exist in almost every county in England, Wales, and Scotland. They vary in quality, but the best of them have decades of accumulated knowledge that simply doesn’t appear anywhere online. Joining one is often the fastest way to avoid six months of mistakes.
Your local library is also worth a visit early on. Many libraries maintain local studies collections — folders, maps, photographs, published histories — that are free to access and often surprisingly comprehensive. A local studies librarian who knows their collection can save you an enormous amount of time.
Set up a research file from the start
This is the advice that beginners most consistently ignore, and most consistently wish they’d followed. Keep a record of everything you find, where you found it, and what it does or doesn’t tell you. Organise it from the beginning, even if you’re not sure yet what shape your research will take.
The reason is simple. You will find something, set it aside, forget where you found it, and spend three hours looking for it again. This happens to everyone. A simple folder structure — one folder per source type, one document per research session noting what you looked at and what you found — will save you from that particular frustration.
Accept that it takes time
Local history research is not fast. Archives have limited opening hours. Documents take time to find and then read. Questions, on the other hand, will pile up fast; the more you research, the more you realise you don’t know. This can be frustrating, but it means you’re doing it right. The discipline rewards patience and persistence, and punishes the expectation of instant results.
But the rewards, when they come, are real. Finding a specific person in a specific document — an ancestor, a previous occupant of your house, someone connected to an event you’ve been researching — produces a satisfaction that is difficult to describe to anyone who hasn’t experienced it.
That feeling is worth the time it takes to get there. Start with one question, follow where it leads, and see what you find.