London Metropolitan Archives: A Family History Guide

The Polish Genealogist Updated on

London Metropolitan Archives (LMA) is the main public archive for the City of London and the former counties of London and Middlesex. In August 2024 it was renamed The London Archives, but it is the same service in the same building at 40 Northampton Road, Clerkenwell, run by the City of London Corporation. For family historians it holds the Church of England parish registers for most London and Middlesex parishes, workhouse and Poor Law records, electoral registers, land tax, school, hospital and court records.

Many of its most used family history series can be searched on Ancestry, which is free on the computers at the archive. Original documents need a free History Card and a visit. Census returns and birth, marriage and death certificates are not held there: those come from The National Archives and the General Register Office.

What London Metropolitan Archives is

The archive grew out of several older record offices. The Greater London Record Office, formed in 1965 from the London County and Middlesex county record offices, became London Metropolitan Archives in 1997. The Corporation of London Records Office joined in 2003 and the Guildhall Library manuscripts in 2007. Since the 2024 renaming you will see both names in books, forums and catalogue references.

For genealogy the key point is geography. The archive covers the Square Mile, the old County of London (inner London, roughly the area of the London County Council from 1889 to 1965) and the old county of Middlesex. It is not a national archive and it does not hold everything for every London borough.

Family history records held at the archive

The archive’s own first-steps guide names parish registers, electoral registers, land tax records and Poor Law records as its core family history sources. The main groups are these:

  • Church of England parish registers: baptisms, marriages and burials for most parishes in the City of London and the former counties of London and Middlesex, from 1538. Parishes in the ancient City of Westminster are the exception; their registers are at Westminster City Archives.
  • Marriage licences, bonds and allegations for the City of London, Middlesex and Surrey.
  • Nonconformist registers, mainly Methodist, Congregationalist, Baptist and United Reformed congregations.
  • Poor Law records: workhouse admission and discharge registers, creed registers, settlement examinations and removal orders, from parish overseers and from the Boards of Guardians after 1834.
  • Electoral registers for London and Middlesex from 1832, with poll books and overseers’ returns.
  • Land tax and rate books, which place a householder at an address year by year.
  • School records, including admission and discharge registers for London schools and the Poor Law district schools.
  • Hospital records, including Guy’s and St Thomas’, and the former county asylums at Hanwell, Colney Hatch and Banstead.
  • Court records, including Middlesex, Westminster, City of London and County of London sessions, coroners’ inquests and magistrates’ courts.
  • Wills proved in the London, Middlesex and Surrey church courts before 1858, cemetery registers, Freedom of the City papers, fire insurance registers and prison records such as Holloway.

Some modern records are closed to comply with data protection law, so recent hospital, school and welfare files may not be open to the public.

Which LMA records are on Ancestry

The archive has digitised its most used family history series in partnership with Ancestry. Ancestry needs a subscription at home, but access is free in the Information Area at the archive. The datasets are listed on the archive’s first-steps guide; the ones most people use are:

Ancestry datasetYears
London, England, Church of England Baptisms, Marriages and Burials1538-1812
London, England, Church of England Births and Baptisms1813 onwards (to the 1920s)
London, England, Church of England Marriages and Banns1754 onwards (to about 1940)
London, England, Church of England Deaths and Burials1813-2003
London, England, Electoral Registers1832-1972
London, England, Land Tax Records1692-1932
London, England, Workhouse Admission and Discharge Records1764-1921
London, England, School Admissions and Discharges1840-1911 and 1912-1918
London, England, Poor Law Hospital Admissions and Discharges1842-1918
London, England, Wills and Probate1507-1858

Search each dataset on its own through Ancestry’s Card Catalogue; it is often more reliable than the general search for foreign names. The archive notes that some datasets have gaps where records have not survived, and that anything after the end date of a dataset has to be seen in person. For example, baptisms from 1926 and marriages from 1942 are not online. Many inner London burial registers stop in the 1850s, when the old churchyards closed; later burials are in cemetery registers.

Only some Poor Law registers are indexed by name; if a search fails, browse the register for the right workhouse and date page by page.

How to search the catalogue

Everything that is not on Ancestry is found through the archive’s online catalogue at search.lma.gov.uk, which describes more than three million items. The catalogue still uses the LMA name in its address.

  1. Search by parish name, workhouse, school, hospital or street rather than by a person’s name. Most archive records are catalogued by the body that created them, not by the people named inside.
  2. For parish registers, browse the list of parishes (sort by title and show 100 results per page) to see which registers survive.
  3. For electoral registers, search for the constituency name followed by “electors”. The main series are MR/PER for Middlesex and LCC/PER/B for the County of London.
  4. Note the full reference code of each item you want. You need it to order the document or to ask for a copy.

Free sites such as London Lives (1690-1800), the Old Bailey Proceedings (1674-1913) and the London Picture Archive also index older material.

Visiting: History Card, ordering and copies

Entrance is free and you do not need a card to use Ancestry on the archive’s computers, the reference library, the catalogue or exhibitions. To see original documents you need a History Card. Registration starts online on the catalogue website and is completed in person at the archive; check the History Card page for the identification you need to bring. Once registered, you can order documents in advance so they are ready when you arrive.

At the time of writing (September 2026) the archive is open Monday and Thursday 10am to 4.30pm, Tuesday 10am to 6pm and Wednesday 10am to 7pm, plus one Saturday a month; it is closed on Fridays and Sundays. Documents are ordered on the hour during the day, with a maximum of 10 items per collection. Check the opening times page before you travel.

You can buy a copying permit to photograph documents with your own device, or order digital or printed copies. If you cannot visit, staff can assess documents and quote for copies; at the time of writing this assessment costs £20 for one document or from £40 for several, on top of the copying charges. There is also a paid document research service for short, specific searches in records you have already identified in the catalogue (£86 an hour including VAT at the time of writing, up to 2.5 hours per application). It does not compile family trees.

What is not at London Metropolitan Archives

The archive does not hold national records such as:

Other London archives

Guildhall Library, also run by the City of London Corporation, holds the City livery company archives, the Lloyd’s of London archives (except the captains’ registers, which are at The London Archives) and the Stock Exchange collections. Westminster City Archives holds the Westminster parish registers. Each London borough has its own local studies library or archive, which may hold local census returns and other records not found elsewhere. For outer London areas that were once part of Surrey, Kent, Essex or Hertfordshire, check those county record offices as well. Our list of free genealogy websites covers online indexes for these areas.

Polish families in London records

London has had Polish residents since long before the Second World War, and after 1940 it became the centre of the Polish government-in-exile, the armed forces’ offices and, later, émigré parishes, clubs, schools and the Polish Social and Cultural Centre (POSK) in Hammersmith. That community history is covered in our guide to Polish London. Most records created by Polish institutions are kept by those institutions or by the Polish archives in London, not by The London Archives. What the London Archives adds is the everyday trail of a Polish-born family living in a London street.

What a Polish-born Londoner looks like in these records

  • Electoral registers. Aliens were not entitled to vote, so a Polish-born resident who was not a British subject normally does not appear. This applies to the historical registers: from 2004, as EU citizens, Poles could register for local elections, so later registers are no guide to naturalisation. The first appearance at an address can suggest the approximate date of naturalisation, and the register then tracks the household year by year up to 1972 on Ancestry. A British-born wife may appear before her husband.
  • School admission registers. These give a child’s date of birth, parent’s name, address and previous school, which helps fix a family between census years.
  • Parish registers. A Polish Catholic who married an English partner in a Church of England church appears in the marriage register with father’s name and occupation. Polish Catholic parish registers themselves are generally not part of these Anglican series.
  • Hospital, workhouse and asylum records, where they are open, may state a birthplace or nationality in plain words.

Expect spellings to vary. Clerks wrote what they heard, so Wiśniewski may become Wisniewski or Visnevski, and a first name may be anglicised. Search by address and by first name with wildcards, and read our guide to anglicised Polish surnames.

The next Polish step

London records rarely name a Polish village. Their value is in the dates, addresses and family names that let you find the documents that do. Use the date of first appearance on the electoral register to search for a naturalisation file (see naturalisation records for Poles), and look for military or immigration papers that record the exact place of birth. With a parish or town name in hand, the search moves to the Polish civil and church registers explained in finding a birth entry in Poland.

Official sources