Plymouth & West Devon Record Office

Plymouth City Council's Plymouth & West Devon Record Office was the principal archive repository within Plymouth and the West Devon area and is now held at The Box, which is an archive as well as a museum and art gallery.

The Box holds records of the old borough and modern city of Plymouth, as well as the West Devon area. They hold original records of many organisations and individuals and are always interested to hear of any potential gifts or deposits of archival material. Please contact The Box if you are aware of any such items or if you want to discuss the preservation of your records.

Dating from circa 1190, the archive holds over half a million individual items including deeds, charters, minute books, letters, registers, manorial documents, reports, diaries, financial records, maps, plans and photographs.

Did your ancestor serve an apprenticeship in Devon? Was there a particular trade or skill that carried through generations of your family tree? By delving into these Plymouth and West Devon apprentice records, you can discover your ancestor’s address, parent’s names, master’s name and date of indenture.

Was your ancestor a supplier for the Plymouth alms-house, did they serve on a jury, were they charged for keeping hogs or was your ancestor an orphan in need of aid? If so, you may find your ancestor listed in the Plymouth Borough Records collection.

If your ancestor live in Tavistock in West Devon between 1839 and 1896?, then he/she may appear in the Tavistock Borough Court Luxton Manuscripts collection. The records include court summonses, witness depositions, conviction registers and more.

• Devon, Plymouth Borough Records 1519-1905
• Devon, Tavistock Borough Court Luxton Manuscripts, 1839-1896

Was your ancestor a prisoner or prison officer in Devon in the nineteenth or early twentieth century? For those with convict ancestors, the records will reveal where they were sentenced and for how long. For those with prison officers in their family tree, you will discover the names of prisons in which they served and their salary and rank.

This unique collection allows you to discover whether or not your Plymouth ancestor served in the Plymouth Militia between 1625 and 1831. These records contain the names of 806 men who were called to serve. Men who were chosen by ballot to serve could pay another man to act as a substitute; both names are included in the search results.

This fascinating collection can help you discover if your ancestor from Devon raised money to pay the ransom fee to free men and women held as slaves by Barbary pirates in Turkey and Algiers. Between 1600 and 1900 over a million people were captured by pirates and sold into slavery in the trading ports of North Africa. The pirates, also known as Barbary Corsairs, roamed Europe raiding coastal villages and capturing ships. Captives could be freed by paying a ransom.