British History Online is a digital library of printed primary and secondary sources for the study of Britain and Ireland, with a focus on the period 1300 to 1800.It provides access to 1300 volumes, plus 40,000 images and 10,000 tiles of historical maps of the British Isles.
British History Online (BHO) is the IHR's digital library of printed primary and secondary sources for the study of British and Irish history, with a primary focus on the period between 1300 and 1800. BHO also covers the history of the British empire and Britons in transnational perspective.
British History Online:
Calendars of Patent Rolls for the reign of Edward III, providing records of public government correspondence. 20 volumes now cover period 1216-1343.
This month we complete a project to transcribe, digitise and publish 2500 petitions written and submitted by everyday people between the C16th and C18th.
British History Online now offers records of 30,000 UK and Irish PhD theses, awarded between 1901-2014. Chart links between historians using this data.
The full text of 'The Dictionary of English Furniture Makers, 1640-1840' provides information on 50,000+ makers and craftspeople.
Primary sources: including the journals of the House of Commons and House of Lords (1509-1832), and 42 volumes of primary content published by the London Record Society.
Secondary sources: including 60 volumes from the Survey of London and 175 volumes of the Victoria County History.
Maps: 10,000 map tiles, including the 19th-century series of the Ordnance Survey, searchable by keyword, title or postcode.
Guides and calendars: detailed records of key governmental records, including the Calendars of State Papers, domestic, foreign and colonial.
Research datasets: born-digital records created by specialists, including the Hearth Tax returns for Restoration London.
Victoria County History volumes: digital editions of 170 published volumes of the VCH, covering 35 English counties -- from Bedfordshire to Yorkshire.
Full list of all VCH volumes, listed by county, is available here.
VCH content on British History Online can be browsed or searched by date, region and theme. Individual VCH volumes are also text searchable.
BHO's 1300 volumes include c.40,000 historical images: these range from architectural drawings, plans and topographical artwork to hand-drawn maps and historical and contemporary photographs.
This sample volume -- VCH, Oxfordshire (vol. 18) -- includes a range of images of the kind found throughout British History Online.
Subject guides provide advice on using BHO for biographical, urban, religious, local and parliamentary history.
BHO Premium provides access to 200 additional volumes of content, including:
Calendars provide very detailed summaries of the original manuscript archive. A sample CSP volume is available: the Domestic Papers for James I, 1603-1610.
BHO Premium provides access to page scans of 200 volumes contained within British History Online. Page scans include all volumes in the following, and other, series:
A sample of BHO page scans is available: the Domestic Papers for James I, 1603-1610 (November 1605, covering government reports on the Gunpowder Plot).
Please get in touch if you're interested in subscribing, or adding print or born digital content, to BHO.
This blog post was written by Ruth Slatter and Adam Chapman, Co-General Editors of the VCH. The Victoria County History (VCH), is delighted to announce that its national network of place-based history is growing! 125 years after the VCH was founded, over the last few months it has welcomed four new and evolving VCH projects […]
The post Four New Victoria County History Projects appeared first on On History.
In this second of two blog posts, Anne-Marie Harvatt, VCH Digitisation Summer Intern 2024, reflects on the challenges and potentials of digitising historical sources. As discussed in the earlier of these posts, digitising a VCH Big Red Book is far from straightforward and in many ways the experience is a microcosm for the digitisation of […]
The post Digitising Red Books: the rigours and rewards of increasing online access to Victoria County History volumes (Part 2) appeared first on On History.
In this blog post, Anne-Marie Harvatt, VCH Digitisation Summer Intern 2024, reflects on the process of digitising VCH volumes for British History Online. My time as an intern at the IHR, working on one small part of the process of preparing Victoria County History volumes (non-born-digital historical sources) to be accessible online, has been […]
The post Digitising Red Books: the rigours and rewards of increasing online access to Victoria County History volumes (Part 1) appeared first on On History.
This blog post was written by Justin Colson, Senior Lecturer in Urban and Digital History in the IHR’s Centre for the History of People, Place and Community (CHPPC). Some decisions can have momentous tangible impacts upon where we live: our collective memories, the stories we tell about our communities, and local sense of place. Monastic […]
The post Remembering the Dissolution of the Monasteries from Street Level: Research Scoping Activities – Summer 2023 appeared first on On History.
