Barts Health NHS Trust Archives and Museums

In the archives searchroom

The hospitals which today make up Barts Health NHS Trust have cared for the people of London over many centuries. The Trust Archives preserve and make available the collective memories of the Trust’s hospitals, and the wider story of health care and health education in the City and East London.

Our archives consist of the documents and records that need to be permanently preserved for legal, financial and historical purposes, not just of the hospitals in the current Barts Health Trust, but also of more than thirty other current and former hospitals located in the City and East London and beyond. We also hold object and painting collections, which are accessible for research in the archives searchroom, as well as on display around the hospital sites.  Anyone can access the collections for research, from family and local history researchers to current clinicians and academic historians.

You can search our catalogue online to identify objects of interest and contact us to make an appointment. For more information about booking an appointment to access material in the archives for your research, please visit the archives webpage.

St Bartholomew's Hospital Museum, which tells the story of the hospital's 900-year history, is currently closed for the duration of building works to the hospital's North Wing, for the  safety and security of visitors and collections. The works are taking place as part of the part of the Restoring Historic Barts project led by Barts Heritage. For further information on how to access collections and find out more, please visit the St Bartholomew's Hospital Museum webpage.

The archives receives regular transfers of records from within the Trust through the corporate records management process, but the archives and museums do accept some donations of material from external organisations or individuals. 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.

If you would like to support our work, please consider making a donation to support the work of Barts Health NHS Trust Archives. Please click here to donate.

Want to keep up to date with archives and collections news? Click here to join our newsletter mailing list

We sell a small range of books, prints and postcards -  please see our list of Publications and postcards for sale 2024-25 [pdf] for details. To order any of these items, please email us. 

Our policies

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

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.

Archives and museums online accessibility statement

This accessibility statement applies to: the Barts Health Archives and Museums webpages and online catalogue. The catalogue is run by Barts Health Archives and Museums and uses CalmView, a third-party web publishing platform for archives, developed by Axiell. The content of the online catalogues are developed to meet the accessibility standards outlined in this statement. Read our statement here [pdf].