The National Archives is helping make accessible a financial survey of the Church ordered by Henry VIII after his break with Rome. His inspectors counted 8,000 parish churches, 650 monasteries, 22 cathedrals and numerous chapels, chantries, colleges, schools, hospitals and poor houses as they travelled the length and breadth of England and Wales in 1535. […]

Educators at The National Archives have won a prestigious prize for their history workshops. The team, all trained teachers, won The Sandford Award for Heritage Learning 2025. They bring alive history using maps, drawings, wills, censuses, illustrations and other records from around 26 million documents held at The National Archives in Kew. Sessions based on […]

The National Archives is displaying records related to the Gresford Colliery disaster in Wrexham Library to mark the 91st anniversary on 22 September 2025. Two hundred and sixty-six men and boys died after an underground explosion and devastating fire. Most of the casualties of the disaster in 1934 lived in Wrexham and the surrounding villages. […]

A 1642 will which caused a legal row about William Shakespeare’s property in Stratford-upon-Avon has been discovered at The National Archives. The will made by Thomas Nash on 25 August, 1642 was found in a box of Chancery documents from the 17th century and earlier. Until now, this original version of the will has never […]

Design plans for Titanic, sketches by Raymond Briggs and gig posters by Martin F. Bedford will all be more accessible thanks to cataloguing grants. Archives Revealed has just awarded more than £750,000 in 16 separate grants to archives across the UK. Recipients range from the Harland and Wolff Ship Plan Archive in Belfast to the […]

Following a recent Archive Service Accreditation Panel, the UK Archive Service Accreditation Committee is pleased to announce that the following archive services have been accredited for the first time: Science and Industry Museum North Lanarkshire Archives The Science and Industry Museum is part of the Science Museum Group. Their archive holdings support the work of […]

We have digitised 200 files which have been released by the Cabinet Office. This release includes previously retained files from the Prime Minister’s Office covering Tony Blair’s administration. It also includes records from the administrations of Margaret Thatcher and John Major. The files are available to search via our online catalogue – Discovery. They include: […]

The editors of a ground-breaking new study about emotions and archives which includes work by a researcher at The National Archives has won a prestigious award. Archives and Emotions: International Dialogues across Past, Present and Future won the Waldo Gifford Leland Award for excellent writing and usefulness for archivists. The study examines the role emotions […]

Today, The National Archives is launching a new workshop for students who are blind and visually impaired, using optacartography – a technique for transforming flat documents into 3D models. The workshop includes three-dimensional versions of historic documents from our collection, including a medieval map and a wage slip for Tudor courtier John Blanke. The models […]

The National Archives hosted an evening with the medieval experts who recently discovered a ‘copy’ of the Magna Carta was actually an extremely rare original. An investigation led by Prof David Carpenter of King’s College London revealed the document held at Harvard Law School since the 1940s and thought to be a copy had actually […]

Work to replace the windows in the 1970s part of our building continues and from Monday 16 June will move to the first floor. Our existing aluminium double-glazed windows are now over 40 years old and it is time to replace them. This will ensure we continue to protect and conserve our collections. The new […]

A new public database listing records about railway accidents is being launched at The National Archives on Thursday 5 June to coincide with Volunteers Week. The Railway Work, Life & Death project makes accessible information about 4,500 railway staff killed or injured at work between 1911-1923. It has been made possible because volunteers at The […]

A volunteer at The National Archives has won a London Heritage Volunteer Award for her outstanding work. Katrina Lidbetter won the Going the Extra Mile category in the annual awards managed by London Heritage Volunteering Group. She is one of a team of 22 volunteers who catalogued 203,000 Second World War POW record cards at […]

Seven new members have been appointed to the Advisory Council on National Records and Archives, the independent body which advises the government on access to public records. The appointments were made by Lisa Nandy, Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport. The council advises her on historical public records when they are being transferred […]

Stunning new artwork commissioned by the Government Art Collection to mark the Coronation of Their Majesties King Charles III and Queen Camilla has gone on show in our Happy & Glorious exhibition. The free exhibition includes work by artists from across the UK created in response to the Coronation on 6 May 2023. For the […]

Starting 29 April 2025, we are introducing new security measures to safeguard our visitors, staff and to protect our collections. Upon entering The National Archives’ building, all visitors’ bags, containers and other belongings will be searched by security staff. Prohibited items to our building remain the same and include weapons of any kind, unidentified substances, […]

Work to replace the windows in the 1970s part of our building continues and from late Spring will move to the first floor. The work is due to be completed by the end of August. Our existing aluminium double-glazed windows are now over 40 years old and it is time to replace them. This will […]

New members are being sought for a panel which advises The Master of the Rolls on historical documents related to the manorial system and tithes. Manorial documents relate to a type of land ownership known as copyhold, abolished in 1922. Tithing was the practice of giving one tenth of all agricultural produce annually to support […]

Researchers have embarked on a £1 million project to examine the lasting impact of Radclyffe Hall’s radical novel “The Well of Loneliness”. Published in 1928, the book follows the life of Stephen Gordon who falls in love with another woman and eventually finds temporary happiness with a female partner while serving as an ambulance driver […]

Stunning new artwork commissioned by the Government Art Collection to mark the Coronation of Their Majesties King Charles III and Queen Camilla goes on show at The National Archives from 2 May. The free exhibition, Happy & Glorious, showcases work by artists from across the UK created in response to the Coronation on 6 May […]

Two radically different archives, Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh and The Tank Museum at Bovington, have won accredited status for the first time for their archive services. The award shows they meet the UK standard for managing collections and enabling public access to their records. It also means they have shown resilience and the ability to […]

This week we welcomed a delegation from the All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) for Archives and History to learn more about the work of The National Archives. Members of the APPG were treated to a tour of our repositories, followed by a display of some of our iconic documents hosted by Dr Jess Nelson and Dr […]

Professor Andrew Wathey CBE has been reappointed for a second term as Chair of The National Archives Board. The term will begin in April 2025 and run for 5 years. Andrew was Vice-Chancellor and Chief Executive of Northumbria University from 2008 to 2022, and previously Senior Vice-Principal and Professor of Music History at Royal Holloway […]

Archives Revealed has awarded 12 cataloguing grants and its first ever consortium grant to archives across the UK. Archives Revealed is a partnership programme between The National Archives, the Pilgrim Trust, the Wolfson Foundation and The National Lottery Heritage Fund which helps unlock collections across the UK and build the skills needed to care for […]

The National Archives has been awarded a £1 million grant by Lloyd’s Register Foundation for a new, collaborative research programme on the history of the transatlantic trade in enslaved people. PASSAGE (Partnership for Transatlantic Slavery Scholarship, Archiving and Global Exchange) will connect scholars and archival collections at The National Archives, Lloyd’s Register Foundation, and other […]