Shropshire Archives has all sorts of information including:
- old maps
- population figures
- trade and street directories
- electoral registers
- photographs.
For many places there are also records of the local churches, chapels, schools and landed estates.
Historically, the parishes were the main administrative units so many of the sources at Shropshire Archives are indexed by ecclesiastical parish.
We are producing place guides for each of the 300 parishes in Shropshire. Why not begin by following the link to these?
We've also produced mini-guides to types of sources (maps, newspapers etc) and research areas (e.g. archaeology).
Follow the link to our source guides
House history
This can be absolutely fascinating but is also likely to be time consuming and frustrating.
Shropshire Archives has recently published a House History Guide. This gives background information about the sources available at Shropshire Archives and tells you how to access them.
Photographs
We have a large collection of photographs, dating from the Victorian times to the present day. To see photographs here, you will need one of our Readers' Tickets; more details about these are in the Visiting us section.
You can see many photographs and illustrations on-line. More and more are being added to the Discovering Shropshire’s History website so do keep checking the link.
The Secret Shropshire website contains many beautiful images and, for the Oswestry area, the Routes to Roots website contains photographs and other useful resources.
We can provide high quality reproductions of old photographs on photographic paper or as digital images on CD or via email. Find out more by visiting our Image Services page.
Information elsewhere
Some local material is held at Oswestry Town Council and the Ironbridge Gorge Museum and Library. The contact details for these and all archive offices across England and Wales are given in the ARCHON directory.
It is worth remembering that relevant material may be held by the national organisations, such as the National Archives or the British Library.