Heritage and culture

Catalogues

Catalogues to many of our collections are available in our searchroom. Each collection has a unique reference, and you can locate this reference in two ways.

• Visit Warwickshire’s Past Unlocked and make a note of either the accession number or the document reference.
• Use our card indexes when you visit.

Once you have identified the reference for the collection, you can use this to find the catalogue. The catalogues are on open-access shelves in numerical order, by collection reference.

Searchroom card indexes

• General index – the most comprehensive and up to date, arranged mainly by place
• Property – deeds, sale catalogues, valuations etc., arranged by place
• Subject – covering about half of our catalogues
• Personal names – covering less than five per cent of our catalogues
• Maps, manuscript and printed – fairly comprehensive.
• Warwick Borough Records
• Non-conformist churches and ministers
• School records
• Wills in private collections, Peculiars etc. NB: This does not cover the vast majority of pre-1858 Warwickshire wills which are at Worcester and Lichfield Record Offices. See our Wills and Probate guide for more information.
• Poor law and apprenticeship – mainly pre-1835 for Warwick and Nuneaton
• Indexes to photographs by place, subject, and person
• Indexes to prints and views and portraits
• Indexes to Warwick Burials, 1651-1992
• Warwickshire Newspapers
• Warwickshire records in other record offices.

Other indexes and lists

• Rate books – the record office has produced lists of rate books to be found within our collections.
• National Probate index 1858-1943
• General Register Office indexes on microfiche cover births, marriages and deaths 1837-1983. We cannot issue copies of birth, marriage or death certificates as we are not a register office. You can order certificates online from the GRO website.
• Family and estate indexes by name and place for some important collections. Including:
  • Warwick Castle
  • Feilding of Newnham Paddox
  • Pennant of Downing
  • Seymour of Ragley
  • Throckmorton of Coughton
  • Lucy of Charlecote.
• Parish register transcripts and indexes.
• Keys to tithe, enclosure and estate maps, showing their coverage.

Online resources

Online access to a range of websites for family and local history. This includes free access to subscription sites such as Ancestry, FindMyPast, Midlands Historical Data and the British Newspaper Archive.

User guides

We’ve produced a series of user guides to help you get the most out of our most popular resources. You can view these by downloading the PDFs below:

• Indexes and Catalogues PDF
• Microfilm and Microfiche PDF
• The Record Office Library PDF
• Maps PDF
• Photographs, prints and drawings PDF

Record office library

Before undertaking any research it is advisable to consult printed sources. One of the strengths of the County Record Office’s ever-growing library is its collection of works relating to Warwickshire local history. Our library is reference only.

Each book in our library has a unique reference and is arranged in order of reference. To find a reference for a book in our library, you can use the library card index by subject, author and place, which is available in the searchroom.