How to find Welsh ancestors at Glamorgan Archives

Discover how to find your Welsh ancestors with our guide to records held at Glamorgan Archives.

Glamorgan Archives holds records relating to the history of Glamorgan and its people, with more than eight centuries of Welsh history under its roof.

The Archives website is a great place to begin your exploration of the resources, using the research guides, which cover a variety of topics including court records, poor relief, house history and police records. Each of these guides contains background information to the topic, followed by details of what relevant records are held at the Archives, and the various indexes which relate to these.

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Canfod, the Glamorgan Archives catalogue, can be searched from the website and currently contains over 250,000 entries and is regularly updated with descriptions of new collections received and new catalogues created, which span over 800 years of Glamorgan history.

The site also has a blog which is regularly updated and highlights different documents, including recently catalogued archive material relating to the childhood of Roald Dahl, accounts of the Fine Art, Industrial and Martime Exhibition of 1896, and Glamorgan juvenile convictions from the Victorian era.

Staff and volunteers at the archives have been working on a long-term project to mark the centenary of World War I, and as a result, the Archives’ holdings on the Great War have been made more accessible to researchers. The project blog charts the ongoing work, and volunteers have been working to produce indexes to several sets of records from the World War I period, including log books which chart the effect of the war on various Glamorgan communities, as soldiers were sent to the Front and those at home worked to support their loved ones posted overseas.

Using the search room at Glamorgan Archives

First-time visitors are required to register to use the Archives search room, so bring along two forms of ID, one of which shows your home address. You are welcome to use a digital camera after filling in a permission form, and you can bring your own laptop and use the free Wifi, or work on one of the public PCs.

Plwyf is the Glamorgan Archives’ digital parish register resource, accessible from the search room, which contains more than 400 years worth of baptism, marriage and burial records for Glamorgan, with images of many of the original parish registers.

Details

Glamorgan Archives, Clos Parc Morgannwg, Leckwith, Cardiff CF11 8AW; tel: 02920 872200; website. Open: Mon, 1pm to 5pm, Tue-Fri, 10am-5pm.

Discover more about tracing your Welsh ancestors in the March issue of Family Tree magazine, available from our website.