WIREDGOV

Over 1.5 million people visited the new website 1911census.co.uk in its first four weeks, downloading over a million transcripts and more than 380,000 original census images. The website is run by brightsolid, in association with The National Archives.

Over 27 million English 1911 census entries - 80 per cent of the English records - are online. In most cases you can view the householders' entry in their own handwriting.

Records from the remaining counties of England, Wales, the Isle of Man and the Channel Islands, as well as the naval and overseas military records, will be made available over the coming months.

Easier searching

It's now easier to find your ancestors in the census, thanks to some enhanced search features:

• You can use wildcards (*) or enter just the start of the name
• There's an option to search for name variants – for example, to find everyone listed as 'Smyth' and 'Smythe' along with 'Smith'
• If you don't have exact dates, you can now search within a range of plus or minus five years on date of marriage, and ten years on date of birth
• You can search using only first name, or by the census reference