Ancestry, one of the world’s largest family history websites, is offering free access to over two billion of its records ahead of Remembrance Day.
The free access will start this week and end at 11.59pm on Wednesday 11 November 2026.
The major record sets will allow researchers to find out what their ancestors were doing during both World Wars.
They include the 1911 census, which captures the population of England and Wales before the First World War; First World War service records, among them medal rolls index cards and postwar pension records; the 1921 census, showing how the lives of ordinary people changed after the war; and the 1939 Register, compiled to record Britain’s civilian population at the start of the Second World War.
