Barts Health Archives

Searching the archives

To find out more about our archives, search or browse our online catalogue. We can help and advise researchers, so please contact us with your enquiry.  We also have a suite of research guides, designed to highlight some of the key research themes across our collections and to tell you where you can find, access and understand the relevant records. This is an expanding resource and we will be adding more guides over time.

We aim to be as helpful as possible, but we do not have the staff resources to carry out detailed research for you. 

What we hold

We hold records of over 35 current and former hospitals as well as many organisations, institutions and individuals associated with the hospitals and with health care and health education in London - over 100 individual collections. You can find a full list of archive collections, with links through to the online catalogue, here [pdf] 782KB

View the locations of the hospitals for which we hold records and click through to our catalogue using the map below:

We are continually adding new material to the catalogue, and undertaking conservation work to ensure that the archives can be accessed now and in the future.

In recent years, generous funding from the Wellcome Trust, The Medical College of St Bartholomew’s Hospital Trust, and Barts Charity has enabled us to add thousands more items to our online catalogue. Read more about previous projects The Fight Against Tuberculosis, STIs in East London in the Twentieth Century, and A Study in Specialism on the project blogs, and find out more about the history of Whipps Cross Hospital captured through the Whipps Cross Voices project through the project website.

You can search catalogue descriptions of over 70,000 records online, using our online catalogue. Although the majority of the records listed on the catalogue can currently only be consulted through a visit to the archives, afew collections or series of records have been digitised and can be accessed online, as follows:

• Images from the St Bartholomew's Hospital Pathology Illustrations collection are available as part of the Wellcome Collection's image catalogue.
• Search and browse the Student Registers for St Bartholomew's Hospital Medical College, 1906-1934 and indexes to earlier students
• Search the St Bartholomew's Hospital Journal from 1893 onwards 

A few films from our audio visual collections have been digitised and may be viewed at our YouTube channel, alongside short videos produced by the archives team to highlight items and stories from the collections.

The Historic Hospital Admission Records Project (HHARP) is an online database of admission records for four historic children's hospitals, including the Alexandra Hospital for Children with Hip Disease, records of which are held in our collections. The database of admissions for the Alexandra Hospital covers inpatient admissions for the years 1867-1895  The website also features articles on aspects of the hospital’s history, and short biographies of medical staff. Registration is necessary to access the full contents, but is free of charge.

Records of many other London hospitals whose records are not held by Barts Health Archives are held at London Metropolitan Archives. Their guide to the Hospital Records they hold, and how to access them, is available online.

Useful websites

• Aim25
• The National Archives Discovery

Downloadable KS2 learning resources 

Our KS2 learning resources, based on the history of St Bartholomew’s Hospital and some of the fascinating items from the hospital's collections, are FREE to download. The resource pack is designed to introduce children to the story of the hospital’s nine century history of healthcare – it is not necessary to visit the archives to use it. The pack supports cross-curricular learning, linking to English, Maths, Science and PSHE as well as History. 

The resources consist of a Discovery sheet, highlighting facts and themes from the hospital’s story, and three Activity sheets. There is also an answer sheet providing sample answers to the Activity questions. The resources can be used in the classroom or for home-based learning. We would like to thank the Worshipful Company of Goldsmiths for their generous support for the development of the resource pack.

Please use the links below to download the pack:

Nine centuries of healthcare - Discovery Sheet 1MB

Nine centuries of healthcare - Activity Sheet 1 648KB

Nine centuries of healthcare - Activity Sheet 2 743KB

Nine centuries of healthcare - Activity Sheet 3 1MB

Nine centuries of healthcare - Answer Sheet 103KB

Bringing the collections closer at the Royal London Hospital 

Thanks to generous funding from Barts Charity, we are delighted to be working on a project to develop new interactive digital heritage displays for busy waiting areas in The Royal London Hospital. The new displays will provide new ways for patients and visitors to the hospital to explore material from the historic collections of the hospital, which span nearly three centuries.

We working with patients and local residents who are joining us as Community Curators to select items from the historic collections of the Royal London Hospital for the displays, discover new stories and bring new perspectives on the many histories of the hospital.

We still have some spaces available for workshops in May 2024; if you are interested in taking part, please contact us to find out more and join us for a workshop. Community Curators will each receive a £40 voucher as a thank-you for participating.

Thank you!

St Bartholomew's Hospital Museum tells the story of nine centuries of healthcare at the edge of the City of London. The Museum is currently closed for the duration of building works to the North Wing, for the  safety and security of visitors and collections. Works to the historic North Wing are taking place as part of the part of the Restoring Historic Barts project led by Barts Heritage. Objects and records from our collections, including those formerly on display, are accessible for research at Barts Health NHS Trust Archives. You can search our catalogue online to identify objects of interest and contact us to make an appointment. Find out more about booking appointments here.

We hope to reopen the museum to visitors in 2025. Works to update and improve the museum are expected to take place in the second phase of works, following completion of the most essential restoration works to the exterior and the main public spaces of the building during this first phase of the project. For more information about the Restoring and Sharing Historic Barts programmes, please see the Barts Heritage website. 

Please note, St Bartholomew's Hospital Museum does not hold specimens. Barts Pathology Museum, also on the hospital site, is part of Barts and The London Faculty of Medicine and Dentistry, and is not normally open to the public.

Support St Bartholomew's Hospital Museum

Although the museum is currently closed, Barts Health NHS Trust Archives continues to work to preserve and make available our historic collections. Please consider supporting our work -  click here to donate.

Historic Smithfield and Farringdon

The Norman priory church founded by Rahere, now known as St Bartholomew the Great, is only a few minutes walk from the museum, and the hospital church, St Bartholomew the Less, neighbours the North Wing on the hospital site. Both beautiful churches are open to visitors and worshippers.

Guided walks of the local area led by qualified City Guides take place on a weekly basis, exploring the amazing 900-year story of  St Bartholomew’s Hospital and its surrounding area as well as some of the other fascinating medical stories of the City. Meeting at the Henry VIII  gate outside St Bartholomew’s Hospital the walk will  take in the churches of the hospital, its amazing range of architecture ancient and modern and tell stories of body snatchers, heroic and pioneering medics. The walks run on Fridays at 2.00pm and will finish close to Farringdon Station. For more information, and to book, visit Eventbrite.

You can also use the Geotourist app for a self-guided tour of the local area, with the Historic Farringdon walk, part of the Epic England GPS guided walk series. The walk will take you to key sites in this historic neighbourhood, including the Barbican, Smithfield Market, and the Charterhouse, as well as the hospital itself.

In 2023, we launched the Barts Health NHS Trust Archives newsletter, to share updates on recent activities and current projects. Contact us to join our mailing list. You can also download previous issues here:

Barts Health NHS Trust Archives Newsletter, Number 1, March 2023

Barts Health NHS Trust Archives Newsletter, Number 2: June 2023

Barts Health NHS Trust Archives Newsletter, Number 3: September 2023

Barts Health NHS Trust Archives Newsletter, Number 4: December 2023

Barts Health NHS Trust Archives Newsletter, Number 5: March 2024

We produce detailed policies on key aspects of the Barts Health NHS Trust Archives service, outlining how we collect and care for the material in our collections, and how we provide public access to those collections. 

For more information about what we collect, please refer to our Collections Development policy below. Please contact us before sending any records or objects you wish to donate to our collections. Unsolicited donations sent without contact details of the donor may be disposed of.

All policies are dated and may be revised as appropriate. These policies are reviewed at least every three years to keep them up to date. We will endeavour to have the most up-to-date versions available on this page. If you cannot find a matter of  policy addressed in the documents available here below,  please contact us  for further information.

·     Collections Access policy [pdf]

·     Collections Development policy [pdf]

·     Preservation policy [pdf]

·     Privacy policy [pdf] 

·     Records reclosure and takedown policy [pdf]