Telephone Directory

The History

The first British telephone directory was published in 1880 and by the early 1900's telephone directories covered most of the country.

It was not until the 1970's that poorer people had access to telephones in their homes so the listing tend to be for businessmen and middle/upper classes.

Some telephone directories are available at County Records Offices for visitors .

The BT archives centre at Holborn, London has a visitor centre allowing searching of the entire range of telephone directories and much other telephone related information  from BT and the early telephone companies taken over by BT.

The BT archive of telephone directories from 1880 to 1894 has also been digitalised by Ancestry.co.uk. with images available for a small fee.

Modern telephone books are useful in tracking down living relatives as well as mapping surnames to an area.

What records can you find?

The BT archives contain details of directories from 1880 to the current day.

They are also searchable on Ancestry.