How to look for records of... Companies and businesses

1. Why use this guide?

This is a guide to the various kinds of company and business records held at The National Archives and how to access them. These are predominantly records of dissolved companies.

You may find better sources for the history of a company or business in a local record office or in a company’s own archive, where they exist.

The National Archives does not hold files for Scottish and Northern Irish registered companies. For these, go to the National Records of Scotland and the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland respectively.

For advice on sources of company and business records beyond The National Archives, see our guide to Company records held in other archives.

3. What we hold and what we don’t hold

The vast majority of company records held at The National Archives are for dissolved companies which were incorporated by registration. In most cases, they are not a company’s own records but merely the government records of a company’s registration and dissolution.

When a registered company is dissolved, its registration and dissolution files remain at Companies House for twenty years, after which time they are either destroyed or transferred to The National Archives.

Broadly speaking, since the mid-19th century the percentage of company records transferred to The National Archives has steadily reduced to ever smaller proportions of the total as the number of companies registering has increased.

In the main, The National Archives does not hold records created by companies themselves, but there are exceptions to this. In total there are 1,124 companies whose own records can be found in various National Archives departments, mainly:

• former railway companies
• former canal companies
• other transport companies that passed into public ownership

We do not hold many records of chartered companies or statutory companies.

4. Records of live registered companies

The details of live registered companies are held by Companies House. The main responsibilities of Companies House are to:

• incorporate and dissolve limited companies
• register, examine and store company information
• make information available to the public

You can use the Find and update company information service to access basic company information, including:

• the nature of business
• registered office address
• whether the company is live or dissolved
• previous company names

You should contact Companies House for company registrations made under the Limited Partnership Act, 1907 and newspapers registered under the Newspaper Libel and Registration Act, 1881.

All enquiries should be via the Contact Centre tel: 0303 123 4500 or email enquries@companieshouse.gov.uk

5. A company’s own records after it ceases trading

A company’s own records after it is dissolved are often destroyed but may end up as the property of either its creditors or the ex-company directors. Alternatively, they may be sold, inherited by a successor or deposited in an archive, sometimes a local county archive.

When a solvent company is wound up voluntarily by its shareholders or partners, the company’s records remain the property of the ex-company directors.

When a business becomes insolvent and ceases trading its books and papers become the property of its creditors. Registered companies, once insolvent, are legally represented by either a receiver or liquidator. Unregistered partnerships or sole traders are represented by the Official Receiver or trustees appointed by the Court.

6. Online records

None of the records of companies held at The National Archives are available to view online.

However, basic information for live companies is available online through Companies House – see section 4 for more details.

Notices of receiverships, liquidations and bankruptcies appear in the London Gazette, available on The Gazette website.

Browse the University of Leicester’s collection of trade directories for companies and businesses in England and Wales in the 18th, 19th and early 20th centuries.

7. How to trace basic company information and search for original documents

This section provides broad advice on searching for company records in general at The National Archives, as well as suggesting some alternative, easy-to-use sources of basic company information. The subsequent sections of the guide provide advice on more specific record types.

To view almost any of the records of companies held here you will either need to visit us or, where you can identify a specific document reference, order a copy (£). You can use our online catalogue to search for document references.

The registration of companies was first regulated by the Board of Trade and then by its successor departments. These records are found at The National Archives under department code BT. For a sense of the range of documents in the BT department you can browse through the BT divisions and the BT series in our catalogue.

For details of how to search for the records of former railway companies see the Railways research guide.

There are a number of different ways to locate documents for specific companies, some of them explained later in this guide, but the most straightforward ways to perform a broad search are as follows:

7.1 Search our catalogue by company name

A simple search by the name of a company in our catalogue will often uncover any records we may hold for that company.

7.2 Searching our catalogue by company number

Those records of companies that do not appear in our catalogue under the company name are often identified, instead, by their company number.

When companies register they are issued with certificates of incorporation (see left for an example from 1907), sometimes referred to as certificates of registration. Each certificate has a unique number.

You can find a company’s number either by contacting Companies House (see section 4) or by consulting the printed indexes to company numbers in the reading rooms at The National Archives:

• Indexes of Companies Registered from 17 July 1856 to 30 June 1920 (Volume 1, A-K)
• Indexes of Companies Registered from 17 July 1856 to 30 June 1920 (Volume 2, L-Z)
• Alphabetical Index of Companies on the Register on 30 June 1930
• Alphabetical Index of Companies on the Register on 30 June 1937

The entries in these indexes are arranged alphabetically by the legal title of the company. For example, Joseph Lucas Limited will be under ‘Joseph’ and not under ‘Lucas’.

The date of incorporation is an indication of the range in which a company’s number should appear.

7.3 Use published sources

There are several sets of publications, available in The National Archives’ Library, which may prove useful as starting points for tracing the history of some businesses and companies, though none of them provide company numbers. They are:

• The Stock Exchange Official Year-Book, an annual compilation of all companies quoted on the London Exchange (public companies), including statutory as well as registered companies. We have an incomplete collection from 1909-1990. For each company they include:
  • date of incorporation
  • business address
  • the names of its directors
  • a brief note on the nature of the business
• The Register of Defunct Companies Removed from the Year-Book (two volumes up to 1960 and up to 1976-1977). Includes, for each company:
  • date of incorporation
  • date of dissolution
• Trade directories and in particular the Post Office London Directory (for which we have copies dating back to 1822) and Kelly’s Directories for towns, cities and counties in England and Wales (for which we have copies dating from the 19th century to the 1970s). Many local libraries also have copies of historical trade directories.

As well as an alphabetical list of businesses, they contain alphabetical listings of streets, listing all the businesses located on each street. The information for each business is nothing more than:

• business address
• a brief note on the nature of the business

7.4 Search in general correspondence

General correspondence of the Board of Trade covers a broad range of subject matter, some of which relates to individual companies and businesses. There are various records series containing correspondence, which include:

• In-letters, 1791-1863 in BT 1
• Out-letters, 1786-1853 in BT 3
• Correspondence of the Companies Department, 1850-1986 in BT 58

8. Records of companies dissolved after 1860

Search BT 31 by company name or number for records of companies dissolved since 1860 but before the last 20 years or so. These files do not contain the internal day-to-day business records created by a company itself. Documents are primarily of a legal and procedural nature, usually concerned with the winding-up arrangements prior to the dissolution of a company, and the company’s compliance with the Companies Acts. Documents can include:

• memorandum and articles of association containing particulars of the company’s constitution
• lists and stakes of shareholders
• location of registered office
• register of directors
• annual returns

These files are for a sample of companies only and are not comprehensive. They cover companies dissolved after 1860 and registered since 1856 (in accordance with the Joint Stock Companies Act of 1856).

Whether or not a company appears in these records can depend not only on whether it was selected as part of the sample kept, but on the changes in legislation down the years.

From 1907 some private companies were exempt from a public return of accounts and won’t appear in the records at all. On the other hand, the files for public companies dissolved since 2 July 1960 have all been preserved. For more detail on what is included see the BT 31 series description.

9. Records of companies dissolved before 1860

Search series BT 41 by company name for records of companies dissolved before 1860. The files are likely to include some or all of the following:

• nature of the business
• company address
• names of the company’s promoters and their solicitors
• a prospectus
• details of capital
• issue and allocation of shares
• balance sheets

BT 41 contains the files of all Joint Stock Companies which were registered under the Act of 1844 and dissolved before 1856, and of those re-registered under the 1856 Act and dissolved before 1860.

A sample selection of files for dissolved private companies which were exempt from a public return of accounts have been kept in series BT 95 and are arranged by the date of incorporation and company number ranges. They consist of a set of loose-leaf sheets which include details of the nature of the business.

There is some overlap between BT 41 and BT 31 (see section 8), with about 2,000 companies registered under the 1856 Act appearing in both series.