Archives

Bought a full birth certificate copy from them last spring and it came through the post in about a week, which was quicker than I expected. Been using them on and off for years now for bits of family history research and the search tool still works nicely, though the site can be a bit clunky when you're looking through older records.

Compared to the other site I tried, this one felt a bit more expensive for what you get, but I did find my husband's grandfather in the 1911 census which the other one hadn't turned up. The search took a while to get the hang of and I had to try a few spellings before I got a result. Customer service answered my question about credits within a day, which I was grateful for.

I've been researching family trees for about ten years, and I needed to check a few census entries I'd only seen as transcripts. The original scans on here are much better than the typed versions elsewhere, and you can see the marginal notes and corrections that transcribers often miss. The filters for county and year are sensible, so I find things quickly.

Been using this for years and it is still the one I go back to when I want to check a parish entry. The search has got a bit better over time, and the staff answered a question about a damaged image within a day. Keep up the good work.

Honestly this is the best site I've found for tracing my nan's family. Signed up in about two minutes, search was quick, and I found her birth cert and a census entry in one go. Would go back to it.

Compared to the other genealogy site I use, this one is a bit dearer for the same number of views, but the search turned up a baptism record the other site had missed completely. Been a subscriber for a while now and it's still my first port of call when I'm stuck on a line.

Signed up for a trial to look into my great grandad's war record and it all looked promising at first. The sign up process was fine but the trial only let me view a couple of pages before asking for payment. I couldn't find the record I wanted in the search and the support email took three days to answer. Probably not for me.

We needed proof of a previous owner's title for a house sale and the solicitor kept asking for documents we didn't have. Found what we needed on the archive site within an afternoon, the scans were clear and the search filters made it easy to narrow things down. Saved us weeks of chasing councils and county offices by hand.

I looked at three different archive sites before settling on this one, and the thing that struck me most was how clear the photos of the old documents are. I could read the handwriting on a ship's manifest that the others had rendered as a blur. Searching was simple and I got what I needed in one session.