Coventry Archives holds the major collection of published and original records of the history of Coventry including:

  • Archives of the local authority
  • School, hospital and business and non-conformist church records
  • Property plans submitted for local planning approval
  • Building and architects plans, Ordnance Survey and local maps
  • Sources for family historians including census, IGI (see our in depth leaflet on family history sources)
  • Cards for cancelled vehicle registrations

This project brings together two popular collections from Coventry Archives and makes them accessible online. You can find out more about these below.

The website element of this project has been funded through Renaissance West Midlands.

The digitisation of the Board of Health maps was funded by MLA West Midlands.

To find out more about the archive collections we hold please visit http://www.theherbert.org/collections/archives/index.htm

To use the interactive element of this website, you will need Adobe Flash Player. You can download this for free from the Adobe website at http://www.adobe.com/products/flashplayer/


Public health was a major concern in early Victorian times because many more people than before were living crowded together, a situation which spread killer infections such as cholera. Coventry was a particularly good example of these crowded conditions with hundreds of courts or small passageways lined with houses crammed into what would originally have been spacious garden areas behind normal streets. Poor water supply and bad hygiene helped spread cholera swiftly through the population.

Coventry, along with other cities, suffered severe cholera outbreaks throughout the early 1800s with a major epidemic in 1848 – 1849. A quote from the Coventry Poor Law Union Directors Minutes (held at Coventry Archives) for the 25th July 1849 demonstrates the poor conditions, 'It appearing that a very great Nuisance arises from the Cesspools in public streets not having stench traps placed over them which appear to be desirable at the present time'.

These maps were commissioned so that the Coventry Board of Health could see how crowded or open a district was so that they could decide where to allow further housing development and was a direct result of the Public Health Act of 1848.

The collection of 1851 Board of Health Maps covers all areas of the city and is made up of over thirty 10ft to the mile maps, beautifully coloured and detailed, even down to the level of showing individual trees.


According to the Staunton Folio, a portfolio reproducing items of interest to antiquarians in the 1883,

"Nathaniel Troughton was a member of a family of good and long standing in Coventry, where he was born about the year 1794; educated for the medical profession, he gained an excellent reputation, and an extensive practice as a physician. He took great interest in the welfare of the Coventry and Warwickshire Hospital, and was ever ready to promote any good work in his native city. He was an able and industrious artist, and spent much of his leisure in the exercise of brush and pencil. At early morning he might be seen sketching the various objects of antiquarian interest in Coventry, from various points of view, and by this favourite pursuit had accumulated a collection of nearly a thousand characteristic drawings illustrative of Coventry. This series, mounted and bound in volumes, after his death came in to the possession of his cousin, the late Thomas Ball Troughton, Esq., formerly Town Clerk of Coventry, and, bequeathed by him to the Corporation of the City, are now preserved in the Muniment room at St Mary's Hall. The value of such a collection of artistic records to a city like Coventry can hardly be over-estimated furnishing as they do, representations of a class of buildings which are fast disappearing. As may be readily understood, he was a zealous antiquary, and was for some years a member of the Warwickshire Natural History and Archaeological Society. He was a naturalist, and possessed a good collection of birds and shells. Affable and courteous in his manner, he was ever ready to convey information, and equally earnest in acquiring it. His residence in Priory Row, on the site of the church of the Benedictine Monastery, referred to in these pages, was an appropriate home for such a man, and here he died on the 29th of November, 1868, at the ripe age of 74, and was buried in Coventry Cemetery. He is represented in these engravings by an etching of the White Friars, of which building he had made a number of pencil sketches."