Guernsey: Life on the Islands, 1560-2000

This series focuses on Guernsey, the second-largest island in the Channel Islands and a British Crown dependency, as well as the only British territory under German occupation during the Second World War. It offers an exceptionally rich and coherent body of material for the study of the cultural, social, and economic history of the Bailiwick of Guernsey over four centuries, from the 1560s to 2000. It brings together 204,000 images of historical records that highlight the unique heritage of Guernsey, Sark, and Alderney. Moreover, a significant percentage of records are written in Guernésiais (or Guernsey French), making it an unmissable resource for historians, linguists, and researchers interested in the Channel Islands’ unique cultural heritage.

The record sets in this series speak directly to themes of labour, family, war, migration, crime, education, social provision, governance, and more over four centuries, including the following primary source material: 

• Census: The 1827 Guernsey Census was created to track the status of the various residents on the island, including natives, 'strangers', and the homeless, and is therefore an unmissable resource for social historians. 
• Civil records: This series includes records of civil births, marriages, and deaths preserved in the Greffe, the Royal Court House of Guernsey. 
• Parish records: This collection of birth, marriage and burial parish records contains detailed information covering numerous denominations, including Catholic, Methodist, Baptist, Anglican, and Independent. 
• Newspapers: German forces occupied the Channel Islands from June 1940 until May 1945. During the years of occupation, the Stockport and District Channel Islands Society published 47 issues of the Channel Islands Monthly Review to support Channel Island evacuees and loved ones. It became a lifeline for evacuees and those anxiously awaiting news. It carried stories of resilience and hope, updates on life under German rule, and messages of love from afar. 
• Travel and migration: Throughout the nineteenth century, Guernsey became a new home for many seeking refuge, employment, and a fresh start. Captured from the Island Archives on Guernsey, the Guernsey Passenger Lists are an invaluable resource for academics exploring travel and migration to Guernsey in the nineteenth century. 
• War and German occupation: Of particular relevance to academics, researchers, and students is the digitisation of the German identity registration forms, German occupation orders, and evacuee wish to return forms. Identity cards were used to control movement around the island, enforce curfews, access rationed goods, and separate local residents from foreign labourers brought to Guernsey. German Occupation Orders paint a stark picture of daily hardship, control, and quiet resilience. From curfews and confiscations to rationing and repression, they reveal the harsh realities faced by islanders. Lastly, the Evacuee Wish to Return Forms were completed by individuals who had left Guernsey and wanted to return at the end of the German occupation, providing valuable insights into individual's life in Guernsey before the occupation and their time spent in the UK. 
• School records: The school admission records date back into 1882 and offer insights into names and dates of schoolchildren in Guernsey, but also into rhythms of daily life such as siblings enrolled together, families moving between parishes, and children stepping into education for the first time.
• Hospital and Asylum: This series includes admission and discharge records from the Country Hospital, Guernsey Lunatic Asylum and the Town Hospital, shedding light into health, mental wellbeing, and institutions.  
• Poor relief: In Guernsey, poor relief evolved from parish-based support to a more centralised system. Workhouses were established in the eighteenth century, providing care for those in need; in the nineteenth century, each parish formed a Poor Law Board to oversee relief efforts, offering outdoor relief in the form of cash payments; and in 1937, responsibility for poor relief transitioned to the Public Assistance Authority, marking a shift toward a more modern welfare structure. This series brings together the Poor Relief Registers from Island Archives, together with three volumes of the Poor Law Board minute books, and the Strangers Register, a historical record used to document non-resident individuals, or ‘strangers’, who arrived on the island. 
• Court and prison: This series provides access to the Livres en Crime, Guernsey's crime registers which record over 300 years of stories from the sixteenth century onwards, together with two of the Guernsey Public Prison registers dated from 1817 to 1877.
• Cemetery records: This series includes cemetery records digitised from Candie Cemetery, Foulon and Brother's Cemetery. 
• Lands: These records include accounts of who owned land or property on the island of Guernsey, and shed light into Guernsey’s legal system with its roots in Norman customary law, dating back to the island’s historical ties with the Duchy of Normandy. This legal tradition influenced the island’s methods of recording property ownership and inheritance. 
• Wills and probate: This series provides access to wills of personality and wills of realty, offering a fascinating glimpse into Guernsey’s social and cultural life, influenced by the Normal law of succession and its particular historical development. 

This series is the result of the first large-scale digitisation project across the entire Bailiwick of Guernsey, opening up new research potential in a fascinating region and aligning with the growing interest in local geographies and prosopographic methods in social history. The collection offers scholars a rare opportunity to explore insular institutions, civic life, and occupation history through primary evidence supporting both research and teaching. This incredibly rich series will be of interest to a myriad of researchers, including but not limited to social, cultural, legal, and economic historians, as well as those working on migration, religion, medicine, prosopography, local history, and war.