Enquiry service

Elephant from 'Drawings and Journal' by Robert Carter Oakley 1795 - 1835

Our friendly and knowledgeable team can help with a wide range of enquiries from the general to the specialist.

We are very happy to offer guidance on how to go about your research, and what types of sources you may find useful.

As part of our standard enquiry service we will offer advice, list relevant sources, and carry out checks of indexes or other finding aids where these exist. If you need someone to consult documents held here on your behalf, you will need to make use of our research service. Alternatively you are welcome to visit us.

You can contact us by email, post or telephone. We aim to respond to all enquiries within 10 working days.

Remember, you can find out more about what we hold before you visit us or get in touch by:

Using our archives catalogue, or the library catalogue
Consulting our collections pages (including a list of which parish registers we hold for what dates)

If you would like to visit us, you might also find our guide to planning your visit helpful.

Family history

We are happy to offer guidance on how to go about tracing your ancestors, and advise on what sources you may find useful. For more guidance on family history, please see our online guide.

We can carry out quick checks of indexes and transcripts, where these exist, to help track down ancestors. For searches beyond these basic checks, you will need to visit in person or make use of our research service.

If you do visit us, it is a good idea to bring along notes of what you have already found out: lists of names and dates for ancestors, or perhaps a draft family tree.

You might also consider contacting the Dorset Family History Society (opens in a new window) or the Somerset and Dorset Family History Society (opens in a new window) , who can also offer advice and assistance.

Adoption

If you already have information on birth parents/ancestors, we can help with family history enquiries as outlined above.

If you need to access your own adoption records, and you believe the adoption took place in Dorset, you will need to contact the post adoption team. They will arrange access to the appropriate records.

There was no formal adoption process until 1927, before which adoption largely took place through private arrangements. Nationally, there are very few surviving records of adoptions before this date.

House history

We are happy to offer guidance on how to go about tracing the history of your house and advise on what sources you may find useful. For more guidance on house history, please see our online guide.

The census can be a useful source for tracing the social history of properties, showing who lived in a house at 10 years intervals. The census for the whole of England and Wales, 1841-1901, is available through the Ancestry website, which can be accessed for free at the History Centre or in any Dorset library.

Many records may not be catalogued in such a way that you will immediately be able to identify your particular property. House history research may involve working through a large number of documents in order to discover if records have survived for your house.

If you do visit us, it is a good idea to bring along notes of what you already know, perhaps including a map of your house and its immediate surroundings to compare with historical maps.

Local history

If you are interested in local history, you may find our local studies collections and copies of local newspapers particularly useful.

You might also like to look at the Dorset History Forum's website (opens in a new window) (an umbrella organisation that brings together local history groups in Dorset) which can highlight relevant local history groups.

Rights of way and boundary disputes

We are happy to help you search for records that might help when dealing with rights of way and boundary issues, and advise you on what we hold. For example, we hold County Council Rights of Way Definitive Maps and accompanying statements (the latest held here dating from 1989).

However, please note that we can not offer any legal or technical advice in this area. Before visiting us or getting in touch, please contact the Dorset County Council Rights of Way Team or the Land Registry (opens in a new window) . They will be able to advise on what kind of information you will need to look for in our records.

Planning applications and building control regulations

We hold planning and building control records for many of the district and borough councils in Dorset. How these records are indexed and arranged, what dates we hold, and what format the records exist in varies greatly for different parts of Dorset. Please see our guide to these records (pdf, 26kb) (opens in a new window) for more information. We strongly recommend that you contact us before visiting to check we have the records you need.

In many cases it will also be essential to contact the relevant local authority (district or borough council) before visiting us or making an enquiry to the History Centre. This is because:

In some cases, we may hold the records whilst the local district or borough still has the index. Without a reference number from these indexes, we will be unable to find the records you need
More recent records may not yet have been transferred to the History Centre
We will be unable to offer legal or technical advise on planning or building regulations - your district or borough council can give guidance in this area

Where we do hold the records you will either need to visit us to view these, or arrange for one of our archivists to examine these on your behalf as part of a paid enquiry.

In the case of Poole, you can find later planning applications (from the 1970s) onwards available to download as PDF documents on their website (opens in a new window) .

Vehicle licensing

We hold the records of the Dorset Motor Taxation and Licensing Department (ref: NG/MT 1) and the Bournemouth Borough Motor Taxation and Licensing Department (ref: NG/MT 2) up to 1974.

To make use of these records you will need to know, at the very least, the original registration number of the vehicle you are interested in. You can visit us to view these records, or it is also possible to provide copies in most cases (usually these need to be done by our reprographics officer as the records are too large and unwieldy for standard copying).

Note that we can not offer any technical or legal advice on registering or re-registering vehicles. You should direct these enquiries to the DVLA (opens in a new window) .

Certified copies of records

Where you may need a certified copy of a record held here for official purposes (for example your baptism certificate, or a copy of an entry from vehicle registration records), we can provide such a certified copy - for the cost of this service please see our fees and charges page.

Certification is arranged by the duty archivist and copies are signed by a senior member of staff.