Contact Edinburgh City Archives
Service update 29th April 2025
We will close our public access search room on Friday 27th of June for the rest of 2025. This closure allows the team to prepare for a major collections move from our Murrayburn storage facility as the council depot closes. While we are currently closed until Tuesday 20th of May we will reopen as planned. Our last day of public access will then be Thursday 26th of June. We ask any researchers considering visiting us this year to book a visit during these 5 weeks we remain open.
During our closure, we must limit enquiry research to 10 minutes per request. This limitation allows staff to concentrate on the move, which will involve relocating over 6.5 km of records to new sites.
When we reopen our search room in early 2026, it will still be on Level 1 of the City Chambers. We hope to have more collections stored on-site at the City Chambers, which will allow quicker access to them. However, some collections will be sent to third-party storage until we have a permanent home. These will still be accessible once we reopen but will likely take a longer time to retrieve.
Apologies for any inconvenience this may cause.
Please send any queries to Archives@edinburgh.gov.uk
We are the archive service for the Council and its predecessor authorities. In addition to Council records, we also collect records relating to the Edinburgh area and the people of Edinburgh.
The records we collect can be created by clubs, societies, individuals, businesses, and organisations, or by council employees and committees. Our records span from the 12th century through to the present day.
Our collections cover
- education, for example, primary and secondary schools
- commerce and trade, for example, businesses, associations and incorporations
- defence, for example, militias, oaths of allegiance and volunteer regiments
- law and order, for example, municipal courts and policing
- leisure, for example, hobby and sports clubs
- local government, for example, Council, finance, housing, personnel and taxation
- religion, for example, Episcopalian
- social welfare, for example, charities, poor law and social work
- transport and Infrastructure, for example, busses, roads, trams and utilities.
Our aim is to collect, preserve and promote these records and to make them available to the public and other users.
If you have any enquiries about our records, please get in touch and we will do our best to help you.
to keep you up to date with all that is happening in the Archives.