Archives
General summaries of archive holdings
No summary we could give here would adequately describe the wide variety of records we hold. There are printed guides to our collections available (R Sharpe France, Guide to the Lancashire Record Office, 1985, and Janet Martin (ed.), Guide to the Lancashire Record Office: A Supplement, 1992), and many of our catalogues are available online.
Online searching
You might like to discover for yourself if we have particular records in which you are interested. Some of our catalogues, and details of deposits, are available online for you to do this.
You can now access our catalogues online.
There are still considerable numbers of our catalogues that are not yet available via the link above, so you will also find it useful to follow the suggestions below, particularly if you have not found what you want on our on-line catalogues
We supply information to national electronic databases of archival holdings, and external links will take you to these sites. Please bear in mind, though, that not all our catalogues are available online, and we are always happy to answer queries about any records we may hold.
We supply information to national electronic databases of archival holdings, and external links will take you to these sites. Please bear in mind, though, that not all our catalogues are available online, and we are always happy to answer queries about what we have.
Catalogues for the Lancashire Quarter Sessions Papers, Richmond wills and many of the private records are available via the A2A database. A2A is the English strand of the UK Archives Network. A2A aims to create a virtual national archives catalogue, bringing together a mass of information about the rich national archival heritage and making that information available globally from one source via the World Wide Web. The A2A programme is led by the Public Record Office, the Historical Manuscripts Commission and the British Library.
Summary lists of records deposited at LRO are supplied annually to the National Register of Archives. These lists are available and searchable on the NRA website. Recent lists (from 1997) are also available on this site.
Church registers and related resources
This is a guide to our holdings of church registers of baptism, marriage and burial. It contains no names of individuals, only a summary of the registers available here in whatever form. The complete guide is now available.
Lancashire Constabulary database
This index contains the names of police officers who joined the Lancashire Constabulary between 1840 and 1925. It also includes officers in some of the former Lancashire borough police forces where surviving records are held at Lancashire Record Office. Please note that it is not an index of criminals.
Click here to search the Police Records Database
Marriage licences
The bonds and allegations associated with the granting by the church courts of marriage licences are available at Lancashire for the Archdeaconry of Richmond. Printed indexes are available for certain years and copies of the documents can generally be supplied. A database is under construction for the years not covered in the printed indexes.
Handlists
Many popular research topics have been provided with handlists of relevant records and research guides. We hope to have a selection available online soon: in the meantime please ask for details.