A fantastic new resource has just gone online, providing free access to records covering the lives of ‘plebian Londoners’ from 1690-1800.

From today, you can search over 240,000 manuscript and printed pages from eight London archives plus a further 15 datasets at www.londonlives.org. This is a brilliant opportunity to flesh out what you know about your London ancestors’ lives - there are some really fascinating records available and all are very easy to search.

London Lives 1690 to 1800

The London Lives project is a collaboration between the Humanities Research Institute at the University of Sheffield and the Higher Education Digitisation Service at the University of Hertfordshire.

A big thank you to everyone who entered our competition at the Who Do You Think You Are? LIVE exhibition at Kensington Olympia this year! The prize of a 12 month Full subscription was offered on each day of the show, along with two runner-up prizes of a 6 month Full subscription.

I’m pleased to announce that these prizes have now been awarded to the following lucky winners:

12 month Full subscriptions - Robert Forrester, Pamela Freeman and Katherine Harris

6 month Full subscriptions - Rosemary Atkins, Jeremy Briggs, Mrs B Catchpole, Janet Henwood, Jack Miller and David Taylor

You can read more about the events at this year’s Who Do You Think You Are? LIVE exhibition here.

This weekend saw the fourth Who Do You Think You Are? LIVE exhibition at Kensington Olympia. Hundreds of people visited the findmypast shop and kept our Edwardian shopkeepers busy selling vouchers and giving out free Family History Starter Packs.

The findmypast tram proved a popular feature with all the departures pulling a large crowd. Our clippies gave engaging and informative talks throughout the weekend which described in detail how to use findmypast when researching your family history. Here you can see the journey in action:

Our research bay was busy all weekend, with members of the findmypast team answering queries and helping people with their research. Mary, who uses findmypast.co.uk in her research, came to the exhibition with the hope of overcoming a problem. We helped Mary to track down her maternal great-great grandmother who was proving elusive to trace. Our experts also found Mary’s great-great grandmother’s parents, which meant that she now has new avenues of research to explore.

The event was hugely successful and we received lots of valuable feedback about our stand and our website. We’d like to thank everyone who visited our shop, tram and research bay and hope you enjoyed the event as much as we did.

The UK’s biggest family history event returns to London’s Olympia on 26-28 February 2010 for its fourth fascinating year and findmypast.co.uk will be there. Come and visit our stand where you can take your free seat on the findmypast.co.uk ‘tram’. There will be several ‘departures’ every day, each featuring a talk on how to start your journey into the past. There’s no need to book, just check the ‘departures board’ when you arrive to choose the time that suits you. 

You can also pick up some fantastic deals from our Edwardian shopkeeper in the 1911 shop. Offers include £25-worth of PayAsYouGo vouchers for £19.99, a three month subscription for £45 instead of £50 and a 12 month subscription for £135 instead of £150. These subscriptions include access to the 1911 census records as well as all the other great features we have to offer. When you buy any voucher worth £9.99 or more you’ll get a Family History Starter Pack with a free copy of our new video tutorials, designed to help you get the most out of our site.

There will be free access to the findmypast.co.uk website in our research bay so come along and get stuck into your research - you can meet the findmypast.co.uk team and pick their brains for tips!

We look forward to seeing you there.

Findmypast.co.uk is pleased to offer a collection of records to help people track down their London-based ancestors and unearth the milestone events of famous Londoners from the past. The London Collection includes records of baptisms, marriages and burials which date back to 1538. These include significant dates in the lives of famous Londoners including Charles Dickens’ marriage in Chelsea in 1836, captured in the West Middlesex Marriage Index, and William Blake’s somewhat mysterious burial in 1827 at Bunhill Fields, detailed in the City of London Burial Index.

The collection also includes the records of baptisms in London’s Docklands, some of which provide a fascinating insight into popular baby names of the 1700s, including exotic-sounding names such as ‘Hephzibah’, ‘Delight’ and ‘Philadelphia’.

The findmypast.co.uk ‘London Collection’ includes:

• City of London Burial Index – records from all the churches in the City of London from 1813 to 1890
• West Middlesex Marriage Index – detailing 84,863 marriages in 61 parishes from 1538 to 1837
• London Docklands Baptisms – comprising 407,558 baptisms for London’s docklands areas 1712 to 1933
• London and West Kent Probate Indexes – mainly detailing wills and administrations from 1750 to 1858
• The Matchworkers’ Strike – listing participants of the strike of over 700 men, women and teenage boys and girls working at the Bryant and May factory in East London in 1888, the same year as the Jack the Ripper murders

We have just added over 50,000 new City of London Burial Index records to findmypast.co.uk. The records are for St Andrew Holborn church for the period 1754-1812. You can view these records within the parish records collection on our site.

The original City of London Burial Index was created by Cliff Webb and produced by the West Surrey Family History Society in 1991 and re-issued in 1997. It contains details from 75 of the 98 churches within the City of London.

Find out more on our City of London Burials page.

We had a fantastic time at the WhoDoYouThinkYouAre LIVE! show - many thanks to those of you that came to say hello and ask us questions about the service. We only wish we had had more time to talk to you all!

For those that could not make it, we will post our presentation from the 1911 classroom  (which covered how to use the 1911 census and findmypast.com to start building your family tree) on the blog soon.

In the meantime, there are a few more photos available : click on any photo below to get to them.

We’ve added over 31,000 burial records for the parish of St Mary, Lambeth, the former parish church of Lambeth (then in the county of Surrey). These cover the period 1777-1819.