<Home

ask us!

email | chat | phone

UW WorldCat
[advanced search]

UW Catalog
[advanced search]

Site Search

British & Irish History

General Sites | Chronological list | Local History | Scotland | Ireland | Wales

General Sites

• British History Online
  "British History Online is the digital library containing some of the core printed primary and secondary sources for the medieval and modern history of the British Isles. Created by the Institute of Historical Research and the History of Parliament Trust."
• The British Library
  The British Library provides a number of digitized collections including thousands of images.
• National Archives
  The National Archives of Britain has digitized a number of documents including service records, 19th c. wills and Victorian prisoner photographs as part of their Documents Online (fees charged for downloading most documents). Other collections include Moving Here and an educational component Learning Curve.
• VADS
  The Visual Arts Data Service provides a portfolio of over 100,000 images in arts, historic photographs and material culture. Also see the image collection at ingenious and the Lafayette studio part of the collections of the V&A.
• Vision of Britain through Time
  "The Vision of Britain through Time web site provides a window into the Great Britain Historical GIS... is a description of Britain and its localities, showing how they have changed through the centuries."

Chronological List

Roman

• Vindolanda Tablets Online
  "Online edition of the Vindolanda writing tablets, excavated from the Roman fort at Vindolanda in northern England."

Medieval

• Anglo-Saxon Charters
  Extensive collection of texts, background documents, and research aids sponsored by the British Academy and Royal Historical Society.
• Corpus Vitrearum Medii Aevi
  Medieval stained glass in Great Britain.
• Early Manuscripts at Oxford University
  Digitized collections of manuscripts including manuscripts dating from the 9th to 16th centuries. Also see Life of Edward the Confessor, a 13th century manuscript.
• Old English
  "A guide to resources (mostly on-line) for the study of Old English: e-text, manuscript images, fonts, instructional software, CD-ROMs, and more. Part of Online Reference Book for Medieval Studies.
• Secrets of the Norman Invasion
  Author's in-depth document on the Norman invasion positing the theory that the Normans landed at Wilting Manor rather than at Pevensey. Complete with extensive footnotes, Domesday maps, Bayeux Tapestry plates, aerial and resistivity survey photos.
• Medieval English Urban History
  The "aim of this site is to provide historical information about cities and towns in England during the Middle Ages, with particular emphasis on medieval boroughs of East Anglia and on social, political and constitutional history. A selection of primary documents (translated into English) revelant to English urban history is included."

Early Modern

• Richard III Society Online Library
  "Full-text editions and extracts of fifteenth-through nineteenth-century sources on the Ricardian controversy" including Croyland Chronical Continuations.
• Bodleian Library Broadside Ballads
  Searchable collection of over 30,000 digitized British broadside ballads dating from the 16th to early 20th centuries. Includes a small collection of sound files. Also see Early Stuart Libels, a collection of satiric poetry.
• Kraus Collection of Sir Francis Drake
  "This collection comprises important primary and secondary materials accumulated about Drake’s voyages throughout the then Spanish territory of the Americas."
• Tudor History
  This site provides historical narrative, biographies, images and transcripts of selected primary sources dealing with the Tudor period. Also see Life in Elizabethan England.
• Tyburn Tree: Public Execution in Early Modern England
  "Tyburn Tree is designed to provide information on the Web about public execution in Early Modern England, specifically in London." Includes links to documents and a brief bibliography.

Modern -- 18th c.

• The Drawn Sword: Engravings and Woodcuts from the MacBean Stuart and Jacobite Collection
  Searchable collection of 1,300 digitized engravings and woodcuts dealing with the Jacobite rebellions maintained by the University of Aberdeen Historic Collections.
• Dying Speeches & Bloody Murders
  Digitized collection of more than 500 English broadsides dating from 1707 to 1891.
• John Bull and Uncle Sam: Four Centuries of British-American Relations
  Exhibit by the Library of Congress and British Library. "To illuminate the interwoven history of the two nations from the earliest British settlement in Virginia to the present, the exhibition examines exploration and settlement; war, both as enemies and allies; language and literature; science and technology; reform movements; and popular culture."
• Parliament and the British Slave Trade
  Narrative plus a small selection of documents detailing the history between 1600 and 1807.
• Proceedings of the Old Bailey, 1674 to 1913
  "A fully searchable edition of the largest body of texts detailing the lives of non-elite people ever published, containing 197,745 criminal trials held at London's central criminal court."
• Revolution and Romanticism
  "Database of digitised British street literature, published between 1790 and 1840."
• Romantic Chronology
  Primarily a literary site, links to writings of the Romantic period are arranged chronologically. Edited by Laura Mandell at Miami University, Ohio.
• South Sea Bubble Resources
  Digitized pamphlets, books, broadsides, prints and ephemera from the Kress Collection at the Baker Library at Harvard Business School.
• The Spectator Project
  "The Spectator Project is an interactive hypermedia environment for the study of The Tatler and The Spectator and of the eighteenth-century periodical in general." Currently in progress.

Modern -- 19th c.

• British Newspapers 1800-1900
  Searchable collection of newspapers; some are freely available, others for a fee.
• Casebook: Jack the Ripper
  "The 'casebook' includes images, transcriptions, copies of official documents, submitted articles, and a series of contemporary articles and excerpts relating to Victorian London."
• Charles Booth Online Archive
  Charles Booth Online Archive contains digitized versions of poverty maps, police notebooks and the Booth family magazine, The Colony. Also see Booth's 1889 London Poverty Map and Greenwood's Map of London 1827
• Prints from the Curzon Collection: Images of Napoleon and British Fears of Invasion, 1789 - 1815
  Digital collection of 1400 prints.
• Hidden Lives Revealed: Children in Care 1881-1918
  "This site features the full contents of around 150 case files of children in the care of the The Waifs and Strays' Society from Victorian and Edwardian times." Also see Workhouse: The Story of Workhouses.
• Historical Directories
  Digital collection of local and trade directories for England and Wales from 1750-1919.
• HISTPOP
  Historical population (statistical census) reports for Britain and Ireland from 1801 to 1937.
• Industrial Revolution & the Railway System
  The website includes excerpts from primary sources including the Illustrated London News and a small selection of illustrations.
• Monuments and Dust: The Culture of Victorian London
  Ambitious project to provide "complex visual, textual, and statistical representation of Victorian London." Site currently includes excerpts from the Times, a couple of datasets and texts and a VRML model of the Crystal Palace.
• Moving Here - 200 Years of Migration to England
  "Moving Here provides free online access to resources which record and illustrate the migration of the Caribbean, Irish, Jewish and South Asian Communities to England over the past two centuries." Searchable collection of more than 150,000 items including photographs, documents, passenger lists, audio clips and more.
• Roger Fenton's Letters from the Crimea
  Transcripts of letters sent by photographer Roger Fenton during is trip to the Crimea in 1855.
• Science in the 19th Century Periodical
  Index to science articles published in 16 British magazines.
• Victorian Dictionary
  Excerpts from primary sources are organized in the form of a dictionary covering Victorian social history with topics ranging from advertising to women.
• Victorian Web
  The Victorian Web is based in Brown University and serves as an encyclopedia to the period. Also included are links to other sites dealing with the period. Also see Victorian Research Web and the Victorian Women Writers Project.
• Complete Works of Charles Darwin Online
  Collection of Darwin's writings including correspondence, books and articles.
• W.T. Stead Resource Site
  Collection of journalist Stead's writings including his Pall Mall Gazette series on child prostitution, The Maiden Tribute of Modern Babylon.

Modern -- 20th c.

• Battle of Britain
  The Royal Air Force's site on the Battle of Britain includes background information, daily reports and photographs. Also see the Imperial War Museum's online collections site.
• British Cartoon Archive
  Searchable database of 150,000 cartoons published in British magazines and newspapers dating from 1904 through the 1990s. Also see Comic Art at Princeton University Library, Cruikshank Artwork, a small collection of punch cartoons and the Library of Congress' British Cartoon Prints.
• British Pathe
  More than 3000 news features from 1896 to 1970.
• The Cabinet Papers, 1915-1977
  Digitized UK Cabinet Papers for 1915-1977. Papers can be downloaded for free from the National Archives.
• Churchill: The Evidence
  This exhibit on the life and times of Winston Churchill includes a biography and a selection of photographs and documents. Also see the Churchill Papers Catalogue, biography and Churchill and the Great Republic.
• First World War Poetry Digital Archives
  "The heart of the archive consists of collections of highly valued primary material from major poets of the period, including Wilfred Owen, Isaac Rosenberg, Robert Graves, Vera Brittain, and Edward Thomas."
• Guardian Century
  Collection of Guardian newspapers of major events over the 20th century. Also see Digital Archive for the paper.
• Imperial War Museum Online Exhibitions Collection of exhibits dealing with Britain's experience with war in the 20th century from World War I to the Greenham common peace movement of the 1980s. The individual collections include oral histories, photographs, diaries and other material. Also see their online collections.
• Pamphlet Collection
  Partially digitzed collection of 19th and 20th century pamphlets from the British Library of Political & Economic Science. The collections dealing with social policy and transport history are the two collections most fully digitized.
• Piltdown Plot
  Collection of primary and secondary articles dealing with the Piltdown hoax. For other works related to Darwin and evolution see The Huxley and File, Alfred Russel Wallace Page.
• Toyota City Imaging Project
  "A collection of motoring and transport images from the John Johnson Collection of Printed Ephemera." Most of the material deals with automobiles but earlier modes of transportation are also covered.
• The Union Makes Us Strong
  2000 images, reports, and documents detailing the history of the 1926 General Strike.

Local History

• Coal Mining in North Staffordshire
  Exhibit of photographs, drawings and audio dealing with the history of coal mining. For other regional exhibits relating to mining and industry see Lead Mining in the Yorkshire Dales and the Industrial Heritage of Calderdale.
• From History to Her Story
  Yorkshire women's history from 1100 to the present, includes diaries, letters, more than 85,000 images and the records of the West Riding Pauper Lunatic Asylum.
• Here's History Kent
  "Archival material, including articles, maps and images, on Kent History."
• Kirklees Image Archive
  Over 60,000 images from West Yorkshire.
• Leodis Database
  Database of more than 50,000 images of Leeds and vicinity.
• Manchester Local Image Collection
  Collection of almost 80,000 historic photographs of Manchester and vicinity.
• Pictures in Print
  Images of County Durham.
• Picture Sheffield
  Collection of more than 35,000 historic photographs of the Sheffield area.

Scotland

• Aberdeen Harbour Board Collection
  Collection of photographs from the University of Aberdeen depicting the history of the port.
• Glasgow Digital Library
  A variety of digitized resources depicting the history of Glasgow.
• Scottish Economic History Database, 1550-1780
  "This online database has been produced to further the dissemination of data collected during a project on Scottish wages and prices, 1550 -1780."
• Statistical Accounts of Scotland
  Digitized versions of the 1791-1799 and 1834-1845 statistical accounts. The accounts are based on parish records and are "vitally important reference sources for Scotland's history, geography and society."
• Survey of Scottish Witchcraft
  "The database contains all people known to have been accused of witchcraft in early modern Scotland—nearly 4,000 of them. There is information on where and when they were accused, how they were tried, what their fate was, and on a wide range of themes relating to social and cultural history."
• Timothy Pont's Maps
  Manuscript maps created by Timothy Pont in the 1580s and 1590s. The site includes the maps and accompanying narrative.
• University of St. Andrews Photographic Archive
  Thousands of images from the collection of St. Andrews.
• Virtual Mitchell: Images of Glasgow
  Searchable collection of historic photographs despicting Glasgow by the Mitchell public library of Glasgow. Also see the library's Sir Thomas Lipton Digitisation Project.
• The Word on the Street
  Searchable collection of more than 1800 Scottish broadsides.

Ireland

• The 1916 Rising: Personalities & Perspectives
  Online exhibit from the National Library of Ireland provides over 500 images from the Library's collection of books, newspapers, drawings, and proclamations.
• Act of Union Virtual Archive
  Collection of primary source material relevant to the 1801 Act of Union between Ireland and Great Britain includes pamphlets, parliamentary papers, newspaper articles and manuscripts.
• Breaking the Silence
  Collection of oral histories of those Irish people who did not emigrate that "aims to capture living memories of Irish life in the 1940s and 1950s by interviewing those who remained in Ireland in decades when so many were leaving."
• CAIN: Northern Ireland Conflict
  CAIN, Conflict Archive on the Internet, is a "web site devoted to providing a wide range of information and source material on the Northern Ireland conflict and politics in the region from 1968 to the present."
• CELT: Corpus of Electronic Texts
  "To bring the wealth of Irish literary and historical culture (in Irish, Latin, Old Norse, Anglo-Norman French, and English) to the Internet in a rigorously scholarly project." Texts, both literary and historical, date from the medieval period to the 20th c. Also see the Celtic Studies Bibliography.
• County Waterford Image Archive
  Collection of 4000 images of County Waterford in Ireland.
• Fenian Brotherhood Collection
  "The Fenians were established in Ireland and the United States in 1858 with the avowed purpose of overthrowing British rule in Ireland and establishing an Irish Republic." This collection from the American Catholic History Research Center and University Archives contains letters, pamphlets, newspapers and other material from the American branch.
• Views of the Famine
  Transcriptions of Irish and British newspaper coverage of the famine. Also see Irish Views of the Famine.
• Hap Hazard: A Manuscript Resource for Spenser Studies
  Transcribed "collection of state documents concerning Ireland with which Spenser was involved in his capacity as secretary in the administration of Ireland during the 1580s."
• Omagh Bomb Digital Archive
  Archive of newspapers and other material dealing with the 1998 bombing in Omagh, Northern Ireland which killed 29 people.
• Transportation Records
  Searchable database of Irish transported to Australia between 1788 and 1868. Database maintained by the National Archives of Ireland. The transportation records include name, trial date, crime, sentence and ship. Also see Irish Penal Laws.

Wales

• Gathering the Jewels
  More than 20,000 images of objects, texts and photographs that illustrate the rich cultural history of Wales.
• Geoff Charles: Photographs of Wales and the English Border during the Second World War
  6000 photographs.
• Ymgyrchu! A Century of Political and Social Campaigning in Wales
  Selection of documents and images from the National Library of Wales.

Image: Detail from Monet's The Thames at Westminster, 1871.