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Principal Societies

Special Interest Societies

Founded in 1974, the Federation of Family History Societies is the umbrella organisation for the majority of family history societies within the U.K.

It supports over 210 family history societies and other genealogical bodies world-wide with a total membership of over 300,000. It promotes public interest in genealogy and represents the interests of family historians to local and national government bodies. It is currently very active in responding to the government's latest proposals on access to records held by the General Register Office. It coordinates various genealogical projects, such as the National Burial Index.

In the county-by-county listing of local family history societies on this web site, any society that is affiliated to the Federation is indicated as such,

Founded in 1961, the Institute of Heraldic and Genealogical Studies is an educational charitable trust that provides genealogical training and research. It runs a series of full and part time courses in genealogical studies.

Many family historians find it difficult to read and interpret old documents due to the language used, abbreviations adopted and quality of handwriting. The Institute can help in two ways. Firstly it runs paleography courses providing guidance on how to identify documents from the formula of words used, spot key letters and phrases, and expand common abbreviations. Alternatively the Institute can, for a pre-agreed fee, translate, interpret and transcribe a document for you.

The Institute has one of the largest collections of heraldic books and records in Europe.

The Institute is currently involved in research projects investigating the hereditary nature of certain diseases.

Established since 1911, the library at the Society of Genealogists has an extensive collection of genealogical sources contained in original documents, printed publications, microfilm/fiche and computerised databases.

It holds the largest collection of microfilmed parish registers in the British Isles. The number of rolls of microfilm for this and other collections runs to over 6,000.

The Society runs an extensive range of lectures and courses on genealogical subjects and topics.

It is conveniently located within a few minutes' walk of both the London Metropolitan Archives

see Opening Hours page within the society's web site