We are pleased to announce that all counties in Wales are now available on the site, a total of over 2.4 million individuals and over a million households.

As the 1911 census is the first where household schedules were preserved, you will find that some of the census returns are printed in, and completed in, Welsh rather than English - these amount to about 13% of the total schedules for Wales. To help those of you who are not native Welsh speakers but have Welsh ancestors, we have added a new section to the 1911 website which explains the Welsh returns and also provides translation tables to help you interpret your ancestors’ documents.

Our profound thanks to Geoff Riggs and the members of the Association of Family History Societies of Wales who have developed and made this information available - we are very grateful for your time and effort, and are sure that users of the site will appreciate your contribution hugely.

Now all the English counties are complete, we thought it would be useful to let you know the number of people found in each county: in decreasing size order. Note the huge comparative size of Lancashire and Yorkshire (West Riding).

1. Lancashire   4,767,832
2. London   4,521,685
3. Yorkshire, West Riding   3,045,377
4. Durham   1,369,860
5. Essex   1,350,881
6. Staffordshire   1,348,259
7. Middlesex   1,126,465
8. Kent   1,045,591
9. Warwickshire   1,040,409
10. Cheshire   954,779
11. Hampshire   950,579
12. Surrey   845,578
13. Gloucestershire   736,097
14. Devonshire   699,703
15. Northumberland   696,893
16. Derbyshire   688,423
17. Sussex   663,378
18. Nottinghamshire   604,098
19. Lincolnshire   563,960
20. Worcestershire   526,087
21. Yorkshire, East Riding (with York)   515,041
22. Norfolk   499,116
23. Leicestershire   476,553
24. Somersetshire   458,025
25. Yorkshire, North Riding   419,546
26. Suffolk   394,060
27. Northamptonshire   348,515
28. Cornwall   328,098
29. Hertfordshire   311,284
30. Wiltshire   286,822
31. Berkshire   271,009
32. Cumberland   265,746
33. Shropshire   246,307
34. Dorsetshire   223,266
35. Buckinghamshire   219,551
36. Oxfordshire   199,269
37. Cambridgeshire   198,074
38. Bedfordshire   194,588
39. Herefordshire   114,269
40. Westmorland   63,575
41. Huntingdonshire 55,577
42. Rutlandshire   20,346

We are preparing the next counties for loading onto the website during March. Depending on the speed of the data load and any problems found, we anticipate they should be available in 2-3 weeks.

At a minimum we will load the 2 remaining Ridings of Yorkshire and Durham. We may be able to get one or two others in at the same time if all goes well.

Just to let you know that we have now scanned all English counties and have started on Wales. We anticipate that the East and North Ridings of Yorkshire, and Durham will be available by the end of March. Happy St David’s day!

UPDATE: 3/3/09 To the end of February, we have scanned 15.1million images, 93% of total. This leaves 1million (or 7%) to go. We should finish scanning at Kew In April. Compare the number of images to the 1901 census at 1.5 million images - it is over 10 times larger!

We thought we’d give you an update on the remaining counties and approximately when they will appear on the site. Please note that the dates are highly approximate, but we prefer to give you a rough guide rather than a concrete date that might not be accurate. 

The list below is the order of scanning the documents: this might not necessarily be the order the counties actually appear on the site but it should be reasonably close.

The remaining English counties should all be available on the site within two months - the best indication we can give for Wales, Islands and Military at present is summer 2009 but we hope this is more useful than saying nothing! As soon as we can give a closer indication on specific counties and a better steer on Wales, we will.

Order of scanning:

• Yorkshire, East Riding (with York)
• Yorkshire, North Riding
• Durham
• Northumberland
• Cumberland
• Westmorland

• Monmouthshire
• Glamorganshire
• Carmarthenshire
• Pembrokeshire
• Cardiganshire
• Brecknockshire
• Radnorshire
• Montgomeryshire
• Flintshire
• Denbighshire
• Merionethshire
• Carnarvonshire
• Anglesey

• Isle of Man
• Guernsey
• Jersey
• Alderney
• Sark

• Royal Navy
• Military

We thought this would help you visualise where we are in terms of county rollout.

map - 1911 census counties currently live

The counties live represent 83% of the total population in the 1911 Census.

ERRATUM: there is a blue, unnamed chunk of land lying between Denbighshire, Cheshire and Shropshire which is in fact part of Flintshire and therefore not live yet. Islands around the British Isles are also not shown. Thanks to eagle eyed-readers who spotted this - we will get the map updated.

If you have not already seen it, we have already posted an article on the order of scanning and rollout of the counties, click below to read it:

http://blog.1911census.co.uk/2008/12/the-order-of-scanning-and-our-unintentional-northsouth-divide/

This map is based on an original county map generously provided by the Association of British Counties -  http://www.abcounties.co.uk

For those of you wanting to know the % of the population covered by the records available at launch, the figures are:

• 88% of England
• 83% of total population included in census (Including Wales, Islands, Military etc)

Please find below a full list of the 36 counties available at launch. Please see our separate post on the rollout dates of the remaining counties.

If you have not already seen it, we have already posted an article on the order of scanning and rollout of the counties, click below to read it:

http://blog.1911census.co.uk/2008/12/the-order-of-scanning-and-our-unintentional-northsouth-divide/

Counties available at launch:

1. Bedfordshire
2. Berkshire
3. Buckinghamshire
4. Cambridgeshire
5. Cheshire
6. Cornwall
7. Derbyshire
8. Devonshire
9. Dorsetshire
10. Essex
11. Gloucestershire
12. Hampshire
13. Herefordshire
14. Hertfordshire
15. Huntingdonshire
16. Kent
17. Lancashire
18. Leicestershire
19. Lincolnshire
20. London
21. Middlesex
22. Norfolk
23. Northamptonshire
24. Nottinghamshire
25. Oxfordshire
26. Rutlandshire
27. Shropshire
28. Somersetshire
29. Staffordshire
30. Suffolk
31. Surrey
32. Sussex
33. Warwickshire
34. Wiltshire
35. Worcestershire
36. Yorkshire West Riding

 Counties not available for launch:

 England:

• Durham
• Cumberland
• Northumberland
• Westmorland
• Yorkshire – East Riding and North Riding

 Wales:

• Anglesey
• Brecknockshire
• Carnarvonshire
• Cardiganshire
• Carmarthenshire
• Denbighshire
• Flintshire
• Glamorgan
• Merionethshire
• Montgomeryshire
• Monmouthshire
• Pembrokeshire
• Radnorshire

Other:

• Isle of Man
• Channel Islands
• Royal Navy
• Military Establishments

Although there are already 36 complete counties at launch (35 if you don’t count the West Riding of Yorkshire as a county in its own right), there are more to come before the census is complete.

The counties we have released were the most heavily populated in 1911, so in terms of the percentage of the 1911 population 83% of the people included in the Census (and 88% of those in England) are available on the site at launch.

To understand the order we have been scanning the counties (and therefore the order they will become available) please read our previous post on scanning order: http://blog.1911census.co.uk/2008/12/the-order-of-scanning-and-our-unintentional-northsouth-divide/

Because of the way the pieces are ordered, those of you looking for relatives in the north of England and in Wales will have to be patient whilst we scan and transcribe the final pieces of the census. The good news is that we anticipate having the entire census complete by summer. The less good news is that we cannot give you a concrete date for when each individual county will become available (and neither can our Customer Support team!).

There’s a very good reason for this: scanning and preparing the census for publication online is a long process which is not 100% predictable. Although we have been making excellent progress to date (hence the early release of the counties so far) given that they were originally due to complete in 2011 , there are always a few unpredictable things that can delay the process. These include having to stop scanning to hoover dust out of the scanning machines, having to send pieces for conservation before they can be scanned or simple delays in moving the huge quantities of data generated from one place to another. The data for the 1911 census will take up over half a petabyte of storage - that’s the equivalent of over 50 million copies of the Yellow Pages and quite challenging to move around!

Rest assured that as soon as we have more counties to release, we will let you know immediately by email (if you are signed up to receive updates) and on this blog.

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)