Record office catalogues

There are a number of online catalogues which can help you find details of the records we hold.

• Main online catalogue
• Access to Archives
• Find My Past
• National Register of Archives and Archives Online
• Hospital Records Database
• School Records Index
• Plymouth Shipping Catalogue
• Plymouth motor vehicle licensing cards

Main online catalogue

You can search our collections using our own online catalogue.

To carry out a search of our records visit our online archive catalogue page.

Please note that the contents of church registers (baptisms, marriages or burials) cannot be viewed using the online catalogue. For these records please visit the Find My Past website.

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Access to Archives (A2A)

The Access to Archives or A2A website contains details of our holdings up to 2005. It will no longer be added to as it has been replaced by our own Online Catalogue.

To carry out a normal search of A2A, go to the advanced search page and enter your search term in one of the search boxes. This can be any term or phrase: a persons name, a street address, a town name, a company name, etc. In the 'Location of archives' box, select 'Plymouth and West Devon Record Office', then click the 'Search' button. A list of catalogues containing your search term will appear. Clicking on the 'hits' link will take you to a summary of the details found. You can also search for records held in any local authority Record Office in England via this website.

To carry out a global search (search both A2A and the National Archives catalogue at the same time), enter a keyword into the National Archives quick search page.

Please note that the contents of church registers (baptisms, marriages or burials) cannot be viewed using A2A. For these records plese see the Find My Past website.

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Find My Past

An online resource for family history research, which now includes records from Plymouth and West Devon Record Office. It also gives access to the UK General Register Office index of births, marriages and deaths from 1837; the UK censuses of 1841 to 1911 and UK outbound passenger lists from 1879 to 1960. The Find My Past website can only be used for free in the Record Office or in any Plymouth Library.

• Find My Past

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National Register of Archives (NRA) and Archives Online (Archon)

The National Register of Archives (NRA) database and the Archives Online (Archon) databases have indexes of some of our records. You can search by corporate name, personal name, family name and place name. You can also do a direct search of the Plymouth and West Devon Record Office records via Archon.

• The National Register of Archives index
• The Archon Index for Plymouth and West Devon Record Office

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Hospital records catalogue (Hosprec)

Provides information on surviving hospital records in the United Kingdom.

Searches using the terms 'Plymouth', 'Ivybridge' and 'South Brent' will provides you with details on 14 hospitals whose records are held in this office.

• The Hosprec catalogue

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School records index

Search our school records index. The index lists all surviving log books, and admission registers (leavers files, pupil files and punishment books are also held but are not yet part of this index). The index is arranged alphabetically by school name.

• Plymouth A - D
• Plymouth E - H
• Plymouth I - N
• Plymouth O - S
• Plymouth St - Z
• Devon A - I
• Devon J - O

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Plymouth shipping catalogue

This is a list of accessions showing the surviving shipping records for the Port of Plymouth.

• The shipping catalogue

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Plymouth motor vehicle licensing cards

Motor vehicle licensing cards for Plymouth registrations CO, DR and JY from 1921 to 1970's

This is a catalogue giving details of the surviving motor vehicle licensing cards used prior to the setting up of the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency centralised system in 1978. The cards cover all vehicles registered in Plymouth including cars, vans, lorries, motorcycles and buses.

• Plymouth motor vehicle licensing cards catalogue

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