Historical Directories of England & Wales

A collection of digitised trade directories, part of the University of Leicester's Special Collections Online, covering England and Wales from the 1760s to the 1910s.

Please note that free text searching for names, towns, villages and occupations may prove difficult and time consuming. The site may also run slowly on occasion due to the volume of data being searched.

If you are undertaking genealogical or one-name study research you may find resources supplied by commercial genealogy suppliers more suited to your needs.

The directories can be browsed by location and either viewed online one page at a time or downloaded and accessed via a PDF viewer such as Adobe Reader.

For advice on searching the collection see the Directories Help page.

These pages replace the Historical Directories website, withdrawn in March 2014. The site ran for ten years but could no longer be maintained due to hardware and software obsolescence.