About the collection

Bristol Archives holds almost two million documents which record the history of the city and the surrounding area from the 12th century to the present day. These include minutes, accounts, letters, diaries, maps, photographs, films and sound recordings created by many types of organisations and people.

For an overview of our collections, please visit our website.

Our catalogue mainly provides descriptions of our collections, rather than views of the material we hold. However, it does contain digitised images in several major photographic collections.

We have a separate catalogue for material in the British Empire & Commonwealth Collection.

Records of the trafficking of enslaved Africans

Our collections contain many records which document the transatlantic trafficking of enslaved Africans and we are committed to the work of addressing hurtful legacies in the collections in our care.

We are endeavouring to acknowledge offensive, distressing or inappropriate historic language and content related to this subject. We are also working to improve language used in our catalogues, including referring to ‘enslaved people’ rather than ‘slaves’, although words included as direct quotes will remain where appropriate.

To learn more about Bristol’s past links to enslavement and how we are working with these records, please visit our Black history and decolonisation webpages.

We ask for your help in identifying content that causes offence or harm and welcome suggestions for improving catalogue entries on any subject – please contact archives@bristol.gov.uk.

Viewing records

If you’d like to consult any of the items listed in the catalogue, please note the relevant reference numbers and either visit Bristol Archives to view the material or contact us to see if you can order a copy.

Please note that not all of our collections have been catalogued, although we have an ongoing cataloguing programme. We are also in the process of adding older paper catalogues to our database.

Paid search service

If you can’t visit our searchroom, we offer a paid service. We can search for specific information in archive records for £13.00 for up to 30 minutes (£26 commercial rate) or £26 for up to an hour (£52 commercial rate), for a maximum of two hours. For more details, please contact us.

Feedback

If you need any help or you’d like to comment on our catalogue, please contact us.

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Bristol ArchivesB Bond Warehouse, Smeaton RoadBristol BS1 6XNT: 0117 922 4224E: archives@bristol.gov.ukW: www.bristolmuseums.org.uk/bristol-archives