22 January 2025
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Curious about your UK ancestors and their lives? Census records are a treasure trove of information, offering snapshots of your family’s past every 10 years. Learn how to unlock details like their birthplaces, occupations, and living arrangements using this essential guide to the census returns covering the UK.
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To help you see what information is included in each census, and how the amount of useful details taken increases over the decades, we've created a special 'Census Comparison Chart' which is free to download when you sign up to receive the Family Tree newsletter.
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What can the censuses taken in the UK tell you?
Census records are snapshots of your ancestors’ lives. They reveal:
- Family members and relationships
- Ages and estimated birth years
- Birthplaces
- Households, and who was living in the same house
- Occupations, giving a glimpse into their daily lives.
Census records can give you an indication of where family members were born before the introduction of civil registration of births, marriages and deaths (BMDs: 1837 in England and Wales, 1855 in Scotland and 1864 in Ireland), so are useful in that respect too.
Use the census to corroborate facts on BMD certificates and vice-versa – you can work out when children were born, or a parent died or remarried, and much more.
Be wary though and use ‘wild cards’ in your searches – many of our ancestors couldn’t read or write, so enumerators may have guessed at how to spell names, or couples may have lied about being married to cover up illegitimacy or another family scandal.
What years was the census taken in the UK?
The censuses were taken every 10 years, and surviving censuses for England, Wales and Scotland date from 1841 to 1921.
For Ireland, sadly the story is not as simple as many of the earlier censuses have not survived – only the 1901 and 1911 Censuses survive in entirety for Ireland – but at least these surviving two censuses are free to use!
Here are the dates that the censuses were taken:
- 6 June 1841
- 30 March 1851
- 7 April 1861
- 2 April 1871
- 3 April 1881
- 5 April 1891
- 31 March 1901
- 2 April 1911
- 19 June 1921 (read more about the 1921 Census).
Note that the 1921 Census was not taken in Ireland, due to the War of Independence that was being waged at the time. Note too that earlier censuses were taken, but it is those from 1841 that have particular appeal for family historians as the censuses record the names of everyone in the household, and from 1841 details about how they are related to one another too.
Where can I find the UK census online?
Strictly speaking there is no such thing as a UK census, but there are census records for the various countries of Britain and Ireland.
Census records for England and Wales are available on the pay-per-view/commercial websites: TheGenealogist, MyHeritage, findmypast.co.uk, and Ancestry
Ancestry and Findmypast are the only two websites with access to the 1921 census records for England and Wales. All four of the websites mentioned above cover 1841-1911.
Census records for Scotland are available on pay-per-view website, ScotlandsPeople.gov.uk - 1841-1921.
For Ireland, you can find the 1911 and 1901 census records for Ireland, available free, at https://www.census.nationalarchives.ie/ - this website also provides access to the surviving census records for Ireland from earlier census years (but the majority of the earlier material hasn't survived).
Note too the free transcription site https://www.freecen.org.uk/ - it is a work in progress website, but is definitely worth searching.
For Ireland - the 1921 census was never taken, but people with Irish ancestors can look forward to the release of the 1926 census records for the Republic of Ireland on 18 April 2026. What's more the records will be free!
A census for Northern Ireland was taken in 1926 but the records appear to be lost.
The next census that those with Scottish ancestors can look forward to is the 1931, while for people researching ancestors in England and Wales, the next census to look forward to is the 1951.
How to research your family tree using the UK census
When tracing your ancestors it’s best practice to work backwards... This means that it can be advisable to start with the most recent census available for your country of interest, and then work back in time.
How to use the census for family history in 3 easy steps
1. Have a go on all the census websites... the transcriptions may vary across the websites, making it easier to find an ancestor on one website rather than another
2. Less is more... experiment with your search terms, and remember that sometimes you may need to broaden your search or use fewer search terms in order to track someone down
3. Trawl through census pages... in addition to locating your ancestor in the census, it can be very valuable to view the pages before and after your ancestors' entry. This can give you a flavour of the local area, and you may spot other family members living near by. If you can't immediately find someone in the census, you may decide to work through the census pages for their area, page by page, to see if you can identify them.
Originally published January 2021. Reviewed January 2025.