Middlesex

• London Metropolitan Archives (formerly Greater London Record Office), 40 Northampton Road, London EC1R 0HB - holds the archives of the City of London, Greater London Council, the London and Middlesex County Councils and their predecessors, and most parish registers.
• City of Westminster Archives Centre
• Guildhall Library, Aldermanbury, London. EC2P 2EJ
• City of Westminster Libraries
• Ragged School Museum - East London history
• The Institute of Genealogical and Heraldic Studies, in Canterbury, Kent, provides an online list of their library resources relating to London and Middlesex (pdf).
• The Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter Day Saints' Britannia Family History Centre.

London Boroughs - Archives and Locral Studies Libraries: we have links to web sites of each London borough, and to their archives or local studies libraries.

• Victoria County History of Middlesex - this has a substantial amount of information on-line including the text of forthcoming volumes as they are drafted.
• Pevsner's "The Buildings of England" published by Penguin Books in the 1950s to 1970s, is a comprehensive survey of current notable buildings which also includes history of buildings since demolished. It is being brought up to date, and is now published by Yale University Press. London is being covered by six hardback volumes.

We have information about Middlesex cemeteries in our GENUKI London pages.

See separate page

• Deaneries in 1903 with links to lists of parishes of the part of the historic county of Middlesex which was in the County of London in 1903. These also link to lists of churches indicating the formation dates of parishes, and location of records - currently for the inner part of Middlesex.
• GENDOCS had lists of Victorian London Churches and Middlesex churches which have deposited their registers at the London Metropolitan Archives. (The site is gone but is archived.)
• Current churches from FindAChurch is searchable by place-name or grid reference.
• Middlesex parishes showing formation dates is from Brian Fisk.
• Roman Catholic Diocese of Westminster has on their website a list of parishes with links to Catholic parish websites.

• The COLLAGE database (Corporation of London Libraries and Guildhall Art Gallery image database) has very many images related to the churches of Middlesex. Simply search on the church name or the place-name plus 'church' to find relevant images.
• London churches: An architectural and social history by John Blythe Smart (2nd edition, Blythe Smart Publications, Freshwater, Isle of Wight, 2018) lists and describes, with many architectural illustrations, almost all the significant churches and chapels in Greater London. Volume 1 covers the City, volumes II-IV the remainder of the former London County Council area (II northeast, III northwest and IV south), volume V the northern suburbs, and volume VI the southern suburbs.

See separate page.

• Registration Districts in Middlesex for the period 1837-1974.
• Registration Districts in the County London for the period 1837-1965. See this for the areas which became part of the County of London in 1889.
• Registration Districts in Greater London for the period 1965-1974. See this for the majority of Middlesex which became part of Greater London in 1965. For those parts of Middlesex outside Greater London, see
  Elstree and Potters Bar District in Hertfordshire and
  Surrey Northern District in Surrey.

• The Rossbret UK Institutions website has some information on Prisons in Middlesex (now only available on the Internet Archive).

The Middlesex Quarter Sessions records have been described in a series of volumes covering 1550-1709, and in more detail 1612-1618, which are available from British History onlne.

• Description from The National Gazetteer (1868)
• Description from Barclay's Complete and Universal English Dictionary, 1842.)"A county of England, bounded by Hertfordshire, Essex, Surrey, Kent, and Buckinghamshire. It is one of the least counties in England, being only about 22 miles in length, and 14 in breadth. It contains 7 market towns, and about 98 parishes, without including those in London and Westminster. The air is healthy; but the soil in general being a lean gravel, it is naturally a district of little fertility, though by means of the vicinity to the metropolis, many parts of it are converted into rich beds of manure, clothed with almost perpetual verdure. Besides the Thames, the Lea, and the Coln, Middlesex is watered by several small streams, one of which, called the New River, is artificially brought from Amwell, in Hertfordshire, for the purpose of supplying London with water. Indeed, the whole county may be considered as a demesne to the metropolis, the land being laid out in gardens, pastures, and enclosures of all sorts, for its convenience and support. London is its chief place, and county town. Population, 1,576,636."
• The Vision of Britain site has extracts from John Bartholomew's Gazetteer of the British Isles of 1887, and other descriptions.

London has many disused and lost stations, some of which are described on Subterranea Britannica's Disused Stations web page, and their Disused London Underground stations page.

We have information about Middlesex directories in our GENUKI London pages.

• The Vision of Britain website has an extensive historical gazetteer for the whole of Great Britain.
• The Hunt House website has lists of over 8000 London streets with names changed between 1857 and 1945, arranged by both old and new names.

• Look-up Exchanges
  • The Middlesex Look-up Exchange maintained by Brian Fisk
  • The London Look-up Exchange maintained by Brian Fisk

• One-Place Studies

  "One-place studies are a branch of family history and/or local history with a focus on the entire population of a single road, village or community, not just a single, geographically dispersed family line" (Wikipedia). There are listings covering Middlesex on the Society for One-Place Studies website.

• Surname Lists
  • Brian Fisk's Middlesex Surname Interests
  • The London Surnames List maintained by Hugh Winters contains a list of surnames being researched in London and Middlesex.
  • East of London FHS's Surname Interests List for their members researching in the EoLFHS area in Middlesex & Essex.
  • Curious Fox describes itself as the "village by village contact site for anybody researching family history, genealogy and local history in the UK and Ireland." They have a Middlesex listing.
• Frequently Asked Questions: Brian Fisk provides frequently asked questions for genealogy in Middlesex, with answers mainly as web page links.
• GenealogyWise is a social networking site for Genealogists, and has a Middlesex Genealogy group.
• Middlesex Protestation Oath Rolls 1641-2. CD published by Mike Gallafent, email <mgallafent[at]yahoo.co[dot]uk>.
• 'Strangers, Foreigners & Aliens' CD also published by Mike Gallafent, email <mgallafent[at]yahoo.co[dot]uk> is in two parts; the first is of aliens (including Scots!) & their family details, living in London in 1567.
• RootsChat bulletin board has a section for London and Middlesex.

• Victoria County History of Middlesex - this has a substantial amount of information on-line including draft text of parish histories for Westminster, and complete text of forthcoming volume of parish history for Chelsea.
• List of topographical articles in the Middlesex volumes of the Victoria County History
• Tower Hamlets History On-Line - Articles on Tower Hamlets history from a number of 19th and early 20th Century periodicals, site now maintained by East London History Society.
• Londonist has a series of articles focussed on the historical topics to do with London.

Middlesex Deeds Registry By an Act of Parliament of 1708 a registry was established for the registration of all deeds,conveyances, wills, encumbrances, etc, affecting freehold land and land held by a lease forover 21 years within the ancient county of Middlesex. The City of London was not included. The records are at the London Metropolitan Archives.

Mike Durtnall's Historical Manuscripts Pages include information about many descriptions of historical documents taken mainly from online auction catalogues, including nearly 2000 referring to London or Middlesex. [If the link does not work you may find an archvied version on the Wayback Machine.]

Family Deeds provide abstracts of old deeds and documents sold on the open market. They have pages for deeds referring to places in London and Middlesex.

The Lloyd George Domesday Survey (official title The Valuation Office Survey) of 1910-1915 was a survey of all properties, recording their areas, values, tenancies, owners and occupiers, and sometimes other details. There is a guide to these records from The National Archives, and digitised versions with links to the relevant maps are available for the whole of the Greater London area, including almost all the historic County of Middlesex at The Genealogist.

Maps of Middlesex on a separate page

For maps showing only the City of London and not other parts of Middlesex, see the London page.

The County Asylums website includes information about the local authority funded mental hospitals in London (both the City of London and the 1889-1963 London County Council) and in Middlesex.

Simon Forman, the notorious London astrologer, recorded 10,000 consultations between 1596 and 1603. Most of these are medical. Forman's casebooks can now be searched by name (of any party involved), date, sex, age, topic of consultation and many other criteria. The edition includes images of all the manuscript pages of Forman's first volume, and more will follow. They are available from the Casebooks Project at the Department of History and Philosophy of Science of the University of Cambridge

The Metropolitan Police Force was founded in 1829. They have a page on their museums and archives, and advice on research is provided by the Friends of the Metropolitan Police Heritage Charity. Some records are at the National Archives, who also have a guide to records of the force.

• The Rossbret UK Institutions website has some information on Orphanages in Middlesex (now only available on the Internet Archive).

• The Rossbret UK Institutions website has some information on a variety of Poor Law insitutions in Middlesex (now only available on the Internet Archive).

• East of London FHS
• Hillingdon FHS
• London, Westminster and Middlesex FHS includes Westminster & Central Middx FHS,
• West Middlesex FHS
• Map showing the areas covered by these societies
• List of Societies, showing which parishes they cover, provided by Brian Fisk. It includes societies for other parts of London, for example in Surrey and Kent. He also has an Alphabetical List of Parishes, showing which societies cover them.

The Hearth Tax returns for London 1662 and 1666, Westminster 1664 and Middlesex 1666 have been transcribed by the British Academy Hearth Tax Project and are available via British History Online.

Land Tax was levied 1692-1932. Ancestry have indexed the records held at LMA, covering the City of London, Middlesex (including most Westminster parishes), and some parishes in Kent and Surrey. Full information is given in a leaflet from LMA.

Visitations by the Heralds were designed to record the pedigree of armorial families and to confirm their right to bear arms. There is a good guide to them on Chris Phillips' Medieval English Genealogy site. That site also has a list of the published volumes for London 1568, 1633 1634, and 1635 and their availability online.

FamilySearch have the "England, London Electoral Registers, 1847-1913. These cover the current Greater London area with varying periods within that timespan.

We are grateful to the people who have contributed to the information on these pages in various ways. Some of them are listed in the acknowledgements.