Search 1921 Census of England & Wales image browse

The information given on a 1921 Census schedule for a person varies according to, for example, their age and employment status. Typically, though, the 1921 Census records gives at least the following information about an individual:

• Name
• Relationship to the head of household
• Age in years and months
• Marital status or details of orphanhood
• Place of birth
• Schooling or occupation
• Address
• Who they were living with

Depending upon an individual's circumstances, the census return could also show other information such as:

• Nationality
• Employer and place of work
• Number of minor dependants (children and step-children up to the age of 15 years)
• Language spoken

The browse experience is intended as the equivalent of going to an archive in person, calling up a volume in the search room, and being able to page through it from cover to cover.

You can in fact approach browsing the main archival series of records from the 1921 Census – series RG 15 – in two different ways.

Firstly, if you search for a particular person or address, once you have landed on an image of the original page, you can then navigate either side of that image to see adjacent images within that piece, such as those for neighbours (if a household return) or other inmates (in an institution) or service personnel (in armed forces returns). To do this, you need to go to the main 1921 Census advanced person search or our Census Address Search page – see the Useful Links menu to the right-hand side of this page.

Alternatively, instead of using the usual search functionality, you can use the browse experience on this page and search for a particular piece that interests you. This requires some knowledge either of the archival geography of the census (in other words, the piece number, which you may have obtained from previous searches) or of the administrative geography of the census (in other words, the Registration District, Sub-district etc).

The Civil Parish or Place field values come from the archival catalogue metadata and often are not specific. Where a piece included all or part of two or more civil parishes, the government department creating the catalogue metadata did not name the parishes but described the piece as covering “part” of the district in which it was located. The Civil Parish field is therefore indicative only and should not be relied upon; it was not an integral part of the census administrative geography (which was based upon RD, SD and ED only).

For convenience of searching, we have added extra values to two fields:

1. County. This includes, as “counties”, Alderney, Army, Guernsey, Isle of Man, Jersey, Royal Air Force, Royal Navy and Sark.
2. Country. This includes, as “countries”, the Armed Forces Overseas, Channel Islands and Isle of Man.

In the County field, Army, Navy and RAF refer only to the Armed Forces Overseas, which is to be found in pieces RG 15/28107 to 28153 inclusive. There are many other armed forces returns for locations within England, Wales, Channel Islands and Isle of Man which will be found under the relevant county in which they were situated.

The 1921 Census of England & Wales is massive, because the original census schedules were retained for every household and institution. As a single piece (bound volume of schedules) may contain, say, 300 schedules, you will receive multiple search results for most places. For example, there are 78 pieces for the Registration District (RD) of Mile End Old Town in the East End of London, and 239 pieces for the RD of Kings Norton. You can narrow the scope by selecting the Registration Sub-district (SD) if you know it. For example, Kings Norton contains the five Sub-districts of Kings Norton, Balsall Heath, Edgbaston, Acock’s Green and Smethwick. Of course, some Registration Districts are smaller or less densely populated. For instance, there are only eight pieces for Helmsley RD in Yorkshire, and just three for all of Bala RD in Merionethshire.

Your browse search results will indicate the number of images within each piece, so you know in advance what is available.

Note that you can only browse within a single piece (bound volume). You cannot browse from one piece to the next; this is because each piece is stored within its own image folder in the underlying database. If you want to move on to another piece, you will need to close your first piece (put it back on the shelf, as it were) and select a new one.

Each piece within the 1921 Census of England & Wales has been imaged from cover to cover. So when browsing – paging through the volume – you will see almost everything. This includes:

• The front cover boards.
• Fronts and backs of the census schedules.
• Any attachments stuck to schedules. These were imaged in situ and lifted or turned, so that you can see any text on the fronts and backs. This means that, where there is an attachment, you may see, for example, four images for a schedule instead of the usual two.
• Any loose inserts. These were detached and imaged front and back.
• Unused schedule pages. These are common in all the extended format schedule types, such as codes EEE, III and NM, where the census form had room for more entries than were needed. Do not assume that a blank page necessarily means the end of a census schedule – keep paging forward as the blank pages are often interspersed among completed pages.
• Blank census schedules used by enumerators as separators (e.g. to mark where one parish ended and the next one began). These dividers may have text such as “end of civil parish” or “end of enumeration district” handwritten across them.
• The back cover boards.

The only items you will not see are:

• The plain protective acid-free end-papers which were inserted between the front cover and the first census schedule, and between the last census schedule and the back cover, in 1993. There is never any text on these end-papers and they were not scanned.
• Found objects – such as pencil stubs and rubber thimbles accidentally left in the pieces by Census Office staff in or after the summer of 1921. These were imaged separately.

The typical image sequencing for household schedule types is as described below. Note in this respect that the front of the schedule is the one containing the address panel and instructions on form-filling; a back is the main form into which householders entered details.

• Single-sheet schedule types such as A, C, E, M and W: back > front (neither side page-numbered)
• Double schedule types such as AA, CC, EE, MM and WW: back (page 1) > back (page 3) > back (page 2) > front (page not numbered)
• Three-sheet schedule types such as EEE and WWW: back (page 1) > back (page 2) > back (page 3) > back (page 4) > back (page 5) > front (page not numbered)

The counter-intuitive sequencing of pages in the double schedule type, such as EE, is due to the fact that they were printed on a single, very long piece of landscape paper folded in half down the middle to create four sides. By contrast, the longer household schedules, such as EEE, comprised three sheets of paper (each the same size as a regular single-page E schedule) stapled together.

These records conserved, imaged and published by Findmypast come from the original archive series RG 15 at The National Archives.

Please note that copyright applies as follows:

© Crown Copyright. Images reproduced by courtesy of The National Archives, London, England.

<https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk>

The National Archives give no warranty as to the accuracy, completeness or fitness for the purpose of the information provided.

Images may be used only for purposes of research, private study or education.

Applications for any other use should be made to:

The National Archives Image Library

Kew

Richmond

Surrey

TW9 4DU

Tel: +44 (0)20 3908 9131

Email: <[email protected]>