Every year, The National Archives collects information about new accessions from 250 archives across Britain and Ireland. Many archives regularly take in new records to add to their collections – this process is known as accessioning. Records recently collected by other archives The National Archives also has written many research guides describing sources for imperial and commonwealth history including guides on the Colonial Office, Foreign Office, and Dominions Office as well as a guide called Colonies and dependencies: further research.

You can search for records using Discovery our catalogue and selecting the ‘held by The National Archives’ option. As well as official records of the Colonial and Dominions Offices, The National Archives holds many personal and semi-official papers of British ministers and officials relating to former British colonies including the papers of General Sir Redevers Buller ( WO 132), Viscount Cardwell, 4th Earl of Carnarvon ( PRO 30/30), Earl Kitchener of Khartoum ( PRO 30/57) and Viscount Milner ( PRO 30/30). The National Archives is probably the single richest source of records for the study of Imperial and Commonwealth history. Use the Find an archive tool to find contact details for county and other local archives. If you are looking for the records of a particular state-funded school you should, in the first instance, contact the nearest local archive. For further tips on searching, see our Discovery help pages.

Where the keywords you searched for appear in the name of the institution or person that originally created the record (often not the same as the institution or person that currently holds the record), the search results are displayed under the ‘Record creators’ tab. Where the keywords you searched for appear in the description of a record, the search results are displayed under the ‘Records’ tab. Your search results will include details of which archives currently hold the records.Ĭlick on the title of a result for the contact details of the archive which holds the record – you will need to contact this archive for further information about the collection or the record itself. Search Discovery, our catalogue, to find records from over 2,500 archives across the UK, as well as from The National Archives itself.

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