Enfield Local Studies Library & Archive

18th March 2015

by John Clark, Local Studies Officer

First Floor, Thomas Hardy House, 39 London Road, Enfield, Middlesex EN2 6DS

Telephone: 020 8379 2724 Email: local.history@enfield.gov.uk www.enfield.gov.uk/localstudies

Opening Hours: Monday to Friday 9.30am to 5.00pm

There are many types of records here at Local Studies and we have dedicated staff here with a lot of experience of dealing with local and family history questions. They are here on-hand to try to help you find just the sort or record you may need to answer your questions. Among our many records we have:

• Books on the local history of the area, including transport history and biographies of famous local people

• Journals, pamphlets and ephemera relating to local societies, schools and organisations

• Local newspapers dating from 1859

• Over 200 maps, including the first four editions of Enfield OS maps in 6 inch and

25 inch scale

• Trade and street directories

• Electoral registers

• Over 10,000 photographs of the local area dating back to the 1860’s.

• Auctioneers’ catalogues

• Four PCs for online family history research

• Two microfilm readers and one microfiche reader

• Archive material includes records relating to the three former local authorities, Edmonton, Enfield and Southgate

• Resources for teachers and schools

Some of our Collection Highlights includes: • Deeds dating from 1271

• Original maps dating from 1656

• First edition of Meyers’ Enfield Observer • newspapers c.1859

• Journal of Rev John Fuller Russell written in 1841

• Enfield Vestry minutes from 1671

This collection continues to grow thanks to generous donations from members of the public, local organisations and from Enfield

Council, and if you have any local historical records and photos that you are thinking of donating to us we would love to hear from you.

Researching your Family History You can access free of charge the online family history websites Find my Past, The Genealogist, and Ancestry free of charge at the Local Studies Centre. The websites provide census information (including 1911 census), indexes to birth, marriage and death records, parish registers, military records and much more.

Enfield at War

Last year we secured £79,500 of Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF) money for the “Enfield at War” Project that will increase the understanding of the impacts of both the First and Second World Wars in Enfield. The project, is running until September 2015, and is providing opportunities for volunteers to gain experience in archive

research, oral history collection and the digitisation of historic documents and images. They are helping us to produce an on-line database containing a collection of newly digitised wartime images, interactive kiosks points, wartime heritage maps, educational work packs, an online web book and collect oral histories. Residents will also be invited to learn about Enfield’s wartime history, share their memories, photographs and other war time materials at a special “Enfield at War” Open Day in June 2015.

Enfield Council’s Local Studies Library & Archive is open to anyone, anywhere in the World, who wants to know more about the history of Enfield or trace their family history. Based at Thomas Hardy House in Enfield Town we hold a unique and extremely rich collection of thousands of different local historical documents and records dating from the 13th to 21st centuries. We exist to help you understand what life was like for our local forebears, and can help to explain why and how an area, street, house, business or organisation took shape and why it is as it is today.

For more information please visit our webpages at: www.enfield.gov.uk/localstudies