Introduction to our Census Products

The Census - An Essential Tool

The UK census records provide vital information about your ancestors. They include full names, addresses, occupations, ages, relationships, gender, place/county of birth and certain medical conditions, recording a snapshot of family life in years gone by.

High Quality sets for every county in England and Wales 1841-1901

We believe we can provide you with a better product and a better service. We are the only UK company developing a range of complete name indexes for our customers, both online and on CDROM.

The benefits of using BDA census CDs are:

• In independent testing our 1841 census had 30% more readable images than other bi tonal 1841 census publications.
• We use the best source material available to give you the best quality — Silver film for the 1841 which was written in pencil. Diazo for the later years written in pen.
• We use greyscale scanning where it will give greater clarity.
• Our border areas are free to those who've bought a set from S&N. Other companies will charge you for them.
• All our images are scanned in-house by a dedicated team of professionals.
• We use image-enhancing software to get the best results
• All scans are quality-controlled*
• Pages are supplied in Acrobat format, so they can be read, enlarged and printed with the free Adobe Reader
• We help your search by providing you with area and street indexes where available.
• Unique Feature: To make your search really easy we provide name indexes for certain areas (at an additional cost, see below)

*Please bear in mind that a small proportion of the original records are in poor condition due to their age and past handling and storage. We can only give you what is available.

Purchase Name Indexes with your set

This is where S&N census name indexes can save you hours of browsing. They enable you to search for a person by surname, forename and age. Matching entries will be displayed with a reference enabling you to find the original record in our census CD sets.

Some of the indexes alone contain tens of thousands of pages; millions of names! You will be able to pinpoint the one(s) you need in a matter of seconds.

Wherever possible, we provide name indexes to purchasers. These are available in CD-ROM format or online at TheGenealogist.

See Census Name Indexes on CD for latest availability.

Massive Multi-Buy Savings on Census Sets

Mix and Match Savings

Pick any combination of 4 sets and get the cheapest set Free! (excludes 1881 sets)

Simply add four or more current individual census CD sets (not 1881 sets or bundles) to your basket and you will automatically be given the appropriate discount.

“Thank you so much for the 1861 census. The census is brilliant and with the information from www.TheGenealogist.co.uk I found my great great granddad who I've been searching for, for months.” - I.R. Cornwall

Census indexes & transcripts are also available online at:

Online name indexing project - UK Indexer

UK Indexer is a volunteer indexing project for TheGenealogist involving volunteers who, in return for their work, get free vouchers and subscriptions. Your spare time on the indexer means that you help produce the highest quality data for publishing on www.thegenealogist.co.uk benefiting family historians and yourself.

Learn about life, fashion and news in a particular census year:

1841 | 1851 | 1861
1871 | 1881 | 1891 | 1901

S&N's Objectives

Our aim is to provide access to census records in full, in your own home, on both PC and Mac, at a reasonable cost.

Most family historians have access to computers and, as the cost of Silver Film just for London 1841 is around £12,000, we decided that the ideal solution is to transfer these records onto CD.

S&N works in close partnership with British Data Archive Ltd, our sister company, which is solely dedicated to making the British census records available on CD-ROM.