Wartime farming records to be made public by National Archives

Farmers will soon be able to access the wartime records and history of their farms after the National Archives announced a project to digitise its extensive agricultural survey. 

Carried out in 1941, the wartime National Farm Survey is one of the most comprehensive records of land held by the National Archives, and provides a window in time to British agriculture and land use during the Second World War.

The project will see all of the paper records digitised and catalogued, making each farm searchable online at www.nationalarchives.gov.uk.

These records will be freely accessible to farmers, researchers and historians across the country. 

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© The National Archives

The project has been made possible by a £2.13m grant from the Lund Trust, kickstarting work in October last year.

The archiving is set to near completion in March 2027, with teams from across the National Archives working on the conservation, digitisation, transcription, cataloguing, and publishing of the records.

Jeff James, chief executive officer and keeper of the National Archives, said: “This is a unique opportunity to realise the potential of what was seen as a ‘second Domesday Book’, a ‘permanent and comprehensive record of the conditions on the farms of England and Wales’.

“Thanks to this partnership, the National Farm Survey, an enormous database of land ownership and land usage in mid-20th century Britain, will be freely available online to researchers in the UK and globally.”