Welcome to the catalogue of the Essex Record Office, where you can discover your Essex ancestors or the history of your home, village or town. This site offers descriptions of every item in the archive, but not the full text of the documents themselves. Some entries contain images of the item. For help please see our user guides.
Personal visitors to the Record Office searchroom need an Archives Card. If you don't have one, please sign up on the Archives Card site before your visit - but remember that you will still need to produce two forms of identification when you come. There is a list of suitable ID on the Archives Card site.
To use our online subscription service you need first to register on this site (you don't need an Archives Card). But if you only want to browse then please just carry on.
On Sunday 22 November, between 8 a.m. and 12 noon (GMT), essential maintenance will be carried out on our payment system. There may be times when it will not be possible to buy new subscriptions or individual images. We apologize for the inconvenience that this will cause. Existing subscriptions are not affected. [Message posted on 5 November, 4.45 p.m.]
On Monday 23 November, between 8 a.m. and 3 p.m. (GMT), Essex Archives Online itself will be under maintenance. During that time you will be unable to search the catalogue, take out subscriptions, pay for or view images. We apologize for the inconvenience that this will cause. Current subscriptions will be extended by the number of hours lost. [Message posted on 18 November, 6 p.m.]
You can view high quality colour images of Essex parish registers and wills. Just register and buy a subscription.
This is the online catalogue for the Essex Record Office. Here you can find a description of every document we look after. You can also see how each item fits into the collection.
The Essex Record Office holds many thousands of documents, maps, photographs, sound recordings and videos. Most of these have not been digitised. To see these you will have to visit the Essex Record Office in person, or apply for a search, or ask for a copy of a document to be sent to you.
The Essex Record Office has an active digitisation programme, and some of the descriptions in Essex Archives Online include high quality digital images of the records themselves. Using these, you can do some of your family history research or other research without needing to see the originals. All of our images are free to view in the ERO Searchroom. Online, you can view images of a few records for free, but for most digitised records – such as parish registers, wills and electoral registers – you need to register and buy a subscription.