Poles in Britain
Polish Britain.
Records of a community in exile.
Polish life in Britain was shaped by wartime exile, post-war settlement and migration after 2004. These guides cover the records, institutions, communities and traditions that connect British families with Poland.
How families came to Britain.
Resettlement camps, hostels and labour schemes left registers, files and photographs.
- Polish Migration to the UK: History, Waves and Records
- The Polish Resettlement Corps
- Polish Resettlement Camps and Hostels in Britain
- European Volunteer Workers: Records and Polish Roots
- Displaced Persons (DP) Records
- Polish Refugee Camps in Africa and India 1942-1950
- Kennkarte, Arbeitsbuch and DP Card: German Wartime Documents
Names, papers and nationality.
Naturalisation files and name changes connect the British family with its Polish origins.
The Polish forces in Britain.
Archives, memorials and graves that record the men and women who served.
- Monte Cassino Cross: Numbers, Recipients and Records
- Sikorski Institute Archives (PISM)
- The Polish Government-in-Exile in London
- Polish Service Records Held by the MOD
- Polish War Graves in the UK
- Wojtek the Soldier Bear and His Company
- Soviet Deportations to Siberia 1940-1941: Family Records
- Identify a Polish WW2 Uniform from a Photograph
Polish life in Britain.
London institutions, newspapers and population records connect people with the communities they built.
The customs families carried with them.
Food, holidays, dance and family celebrations can preserve names, places and community connections.
- Polish Food in Britain
- Polish Christmas Traditions in Britain
- Polish Easter Traditions in Britain
- Polish Wedding Traditions
- Polish Folk Dances
- Polish Holidays and National Days
- Andrzejki and wax fortune-telling
- Opłatek and the Polish Christmas wafer
- Fat Thursday and Polish pączki
- Polish name days and imieniny
- Polish folk costumes in family photographs
- Polish milk bars and how to order
- Toruń gingerbread and its carved moulds
- Wycinanki from Łowicz and Kurpie
Polish lives that shaped British history.
A writer, an illustrator, an intelligence agent, a codebreaker and a commander: five biographies connecting Polish origins with British literature, wartime cooperation and life in Scotland.
More evidence for your family history
Follow specific places and personal documents back to the earlier Polish family.
About this section
Records of a community that settled in Britain.
Most British families with Polish roots descend from one of two groups: people who came because of the Second World War, and people who arrived after Poland joined the European Union on 1 May 2004. The first group left the fullest paper trail in British archives, from military files and resettlement camp records to naturalisation papers and the registers of Polish parishes and organisations.
From 1940 London was the seat of the Polish government-in-exile, and many members of the Polish forces chose not to return to communist Poland after 1945. The Polish Resettlement Corps and the Polish Resettlement Act 1947 helped them and their families settle in Britain, often after years in camps and hostels. The guides below follow that story through the records it produced.
The culture and traditions guides are here for a practical reason. Customs such as Wigilia, the Easter blessing of food or a name day often survive in a family longer than the documents do, and they can hint at a region, a religion or a community worth searching.
Where to start
- Establish when and how the person arrived: as a soldier, a family member, a European Volunteer Worker or a later migrant.
- For service personnel, request the MOD file first. It usually gives the date and place of birth and the wartime route to Britain.
- Check naturalisation and name-change records if the family later used an English surname.
- Use camps, parishes and newspapers to find addresses and family events in Britain.
- Take the place of birth to the Polish records and continue the family line there.
Common questions
My relative came to Britain with the Polish forces. Where do I start?
Start with the personnel file held by the Ministry of Defence, then look at the Sikorski Institute archives in London for unit and institutional records. The file normally gives the place of birth needed to search in Poland.
Did Polish soldiers in Britain automatically become British?
No. Naturalisation was a separate application, and many Poles lived in Britain for years before applying, or never applied. The guide to UK naturalisation records explains which files survive and how to search for them.
Are there records for Poles who came after 2004?
Immigration files about living people are not open to researchers, so recent migration is mostly documented by family papers and civil registration certificates from the General Register Office. Most of the archive guides in this section cover the period before the 1990s.
Research in Poland
Want to know where the family came from?
We trace Polish soldiers, their families and their home towns in Polish and British archives and explain what we find in English.