We have identified an issue with our payment processor which could cause confusion when you receive your bank or credit card statement if you have bought credits on the beta site.

We have identified that some payments made to 1911census.co.uk are showing on bank and credit card statements as “ScotlandsPeople” instead of “1911census.co.uk”. brightsolid operate ScotlandsPeople as well as findmypast.com and 1911census.co.uk and the wrong company name was applied to the 1911census.co.uk account because of an administrative error.

We have now corrected this but some customers may still get the incorrect company showing on their statements. Please accept our apologies for this error, and our thanks to customers who reported this to us.

Please note that this will not affect your use of the site or the safety of your personal details in any way - it is simply a case of your bank being given a different company name to print on your paper or electronic statement by our payment processor.

However, please be aware of this when checking your statements and remember that your payments to 1911census.co.uk may show as “ScotlandsPeople”.

If you have any concerns please contact the Customer Support team on support@1911census.co.uk or 020 3326 4700.

We wish you a happy 2009 and look forward to welcoming you back when the site launches later in the year.

The 1911census.co.uk team

Just a quick note to remind you that you will not be able to access transcripts or images of original pages you have paid for until the site comes back online at the full launch later in 2009.

Therefore please make sure that you print out transcripts and original pages, or download them to your computer, if you want to work on them in the coming months. Everyting that you have paid for is listed in the “My Records” area.

Once the site is properly launched, you will be able to access any records used during the beta period through the “My Records” area. And of course any credits remaining on your account will be available to spend either on 1911census.co.uk or findmypast.com.

We are now reaching the end of the beta period for the 1911census.co.uk site. Tomorrow will be the last day that the site will be available for use. Unfortunately no more counties will be added at this point so we hope that you have enjoyed using what has been available over Christmas.

The full site launch in 2009 will include many more additional counties. Thank you for the huge volume of feedback you have given us and for your many comments - we will be analysing all of these in depth.

Our best wishes for a happy 2009 and continued success in researching your family history.

The 1911census.co.uk team

Contrary to our earlier post, Herefordshire data is not available on the site - apologies for those looking for ancestors there! We hope the other 25 counties are keeping you busy! And happy Boxing Day.

We’ve added a link to the feedback survey on the right of the page. It takes about 10 minutes to complete the survey but provides invaluable feedback for the team here, so please do complete one.

We’ve received many comments on this blog and through the surveys expressing disappointment at the lack of northern English and Welsh counties during the beta period. We’d like to reassure you that this is not intentional! 

We’ve been scanning and transcribing the census in order of National Archives catalogue piece number. Broadly, this was originally dictated by the civil servants of the time who ordered the numbering system so that it started in London, moving outwards and upwards through the English counties, then the Welsh counties, and finally the islands and military establishments. This is the order in which the records will be released on 1911census.co.uk in 2009. 

Incidentally, the original documents are also stored in this order at the National Archives, so we have been working our way through the two kilometres (or one and a quarter miles in old money) of shelving that these records take up. The records take an enormous amount of time to prepare using hundreds of staff – the 1911 census is eight times larger than previous censuses as it is the only census to date where the household schedules have been preserved. We still have a long way to go until scanning is complete – we will continue to work at  The National Archives well into 2009 to finish the image scanning and we then still have the job of transcribing the remainder of the census. 

Unfortunately the early timing of the beta test means that the counties available are inevitably concentrated in the south, but we wanted to be able to test the site as early as possible with a reasonable number of records available. 

The counties available during beta is restricted to those for which all pieces have been fully scanned and transcribed and which have had personal details redacted (removed) from the images. This is the reason that some southern counties are still not available – we are still in the process of redacting the images or completing the entire county. They have also been selected to give a good balance of urban and rural counties in order to test the address search functionality. 

Our policy is to release only complete counties (as defined by The National Archives catalogue for boundaries) to avoid confusion . 

Inevitably, in a project of this size some counties have to come later than others, unless we’d taken the rather cruel decision to wait until absolutely everything was complete before letting people take a look, but this would have been contrary to the spirit of the Information Commissioner’s ruling that the records should be made available as soon as possible. Everyone should be satisfied in 2009, rather than having to wait until the original opening date of January 2012. 

We hope you’ll bear with us as we continue the project and that the wait for northern counties, Wales and the islands and military records will be worth the wait. 

Due to the positive feedback from the beta period so far, and to allow people to search the extra 22 counties we’ve added, we have extended the beta period into the Christmas holidays.

Please keep an eye on this blog for updates on the shutdown date.

There will not be live Customer Suppport over Christmas, Boxing Day and the weekend directly after (27th/28th) but we will be picking up enquiries again on the 29th.

A few people have received invite emails, deleted them and not been able to get back into the site. Please remember to either bookmark the beta site in your browser, or to use the link on the right of this blog, as you cannot access it from the main 1911census.co.uk site.

Finally, please keep the feedback coming, thank you *ever* so much for your time and help so far, and our very best wishes for a happy Christmas and an excellent New Year from the entire team here at findmypast.com and brightsolid.

Overnight we have loaded 14 new counties.

The new counties now available are:

• Hampshire (NEW)
• Herefordshire (NEW)
• Hertfordshire (NEW)
• Huntingdonshire (NEW)
• Norfolk (NEW)
• Northamptonshire (NEW)
• Oxfordshire (NEW)
• Rutlandshire (NEW)
• Shropshire (NEW)
• Suffolk (NEW)
• Surrey (NEW)
• Sussex (NEW)
• Warwickshire (NEW)
• Worcestershire (NEW)

• London (previously available)
• Middlesex (previously available)
• Staffordshire (previously available)
• Wiltshire (previously available)
• Bedfordshire (previously available)
• Berkshire (previously available)
• Buckinghamshire (previously available)
• Cambridgeshire (previously available)
• Cornwall (previously available)
• Devonshire (previously available)
• Dorsetshire (previously available)
• Gloucestershire (previously available)

The original beta terms and conditions state that the beta access would end on 22 December. This has now been extended to 24 December - two more days of hunting for ancestors, and more opportunities for the team to test different configurations before Christmas.

We already have over 2,000 complete feedback surveys - thank you!

Please do keep filling them in - they are *incredibly* useful.

You can find a link to it on your beta invitation email. Alternatively, there is a link on the “Sign out” confirmation page - just click the “Sign out” link top right and the link is towards the end of the page.