New images for the 1851 census

We’re happy to tell you that overnight we have added a complete new set of images for the 1851 Census, which are of much higher quality than the existing ones. This is part of an ongoing programme to improve the quality of images on records across the site, beginning with the censuses. What you should notice is:

• The images will load significantly faster in both the standard and enhanced viewers
• Images have been reprocessed using newer technology, which makes them easier to read
• Images which were cropped incorrectly, in some cases making part of the original document unreadable, should be significantly rarer!

We hope these new images will make your family history research that tiny bit easier - we will keep you updated on further enhancements to the other census images as they go live on the site.