About Resources

This section provides brief descriptions of the main primary sources available to study the history of medieval London and Londoners, along with information about the chief archives holding medieval documentary material for London, as well as guides to the archaeology, maps, and visual sources for  medieval London. We welcome corrections and additions to our list; please use the Contact Us form.

If a source is available online, we have provided a direct link to the source and acknowledgedthe online host at the end of the entry, but without a link (for example: On BHO).  When a source is available at multiple sites, we cite these other hosts at the end of the entry along with a direct link to the alternative source via the host’s name (for example: On BHO).

The most important online repository of digitized primary sources for the study of medieval London is British History Online, at the Institute of Historical Research, which includes many volumes of the London Record Society, as well as some born-digital materials.   Also linked are primary sources offered as searchable pdfs at the Internet Archive (archive.org: usually items published before 1923) and Haithi Trust. Other digitized sources are available on  Google books; for help navigating this site, see Google Books-Hints and Tips page on Chris Phillips’ Medieval Geneaology site.We generally do not link to items that require a subscription or are behind a pay wall. On occasion, however, we do note items at HeinOnline, for its legal sources such as Selden Society volumes, and MEMSO (Medieval and Early Modern Sources Online) since they contain many relevant sources for this project and can often be accessed through college libraries that subscribe.

The image of the White Tower at the Tower of London is taken from the same manuscript image as our site’s banner image: British Library, Royal MS 16 F. ii, f. 73 (c. 1483, in Bruges).