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The Library and Archive was formed from the collections of the Huguenot Society and the French Hospital and contains the most complete body of Huguenot literature in this country. Since 1957 it has been housed within UCL Special Collections, although it has separate visiting arrangements.
The main focus of the collections is on the social history of Huguenots in the UK. Modern works on Huguenot, Calvinist and Protestant theology are not collected, but some older works can be found in the Rare Books collection.
Both the Library and Archive contain significant sources of genealogical material. See the Links section on the right-hand side of this page for further information on researching Huguenot family history, including important information about the date coverage of Huguenot records.
Most of the library holdings have been catalogued on eUCLid, the UCL Library online catalogue. The catalogues for the archive holdings are not available in electronic form. They are published by the Huguenot Society as part of their Quarto Series and can be consulted in the Library. See the Archive pages for more information.
The Library holds some published material relating to Huguenots in Ireland (please check the catalogue), but the Archive does not contain many sources. See the Irish Section page for further details of additional resources.
The Société de L'Histoire du Protestantisme Français in Paris has an extensive library and centre for genealogy.
The Walloon Library in Leiden contains important genealogical resources for Huguenots in the Netherlands. Their archives contain records for most of the Walloon Churches (the French-speaking Reformed churches in the Northern Netherlands), including records of baptisms, marriages and deaths for the period 1575-1811. They also hold correspondence of important personalities in Huguenot history, including Bayle and Jurieu. The postal address is Bibliothèque Wallonne, c/o University Library Leiden, P.O. Box 9501 2300 RA Leiden and the library is located in the University Library, Witte Singel 27, Leiden.
The Librarian
The Huguenot Library,
University College London,
Gower Street,
London WC1E 6BT
tel 020 7679 5199
UCL Library catalogue (includes Huguenot Library holdings)
How to use the library catalogue
Reader fees and copying charges (pdf document)
Guidance notes for family historians (pdf document)
Resources for family historians in the Huguenot Library (pdf document)
Glossary of French terms used in Huguenot records (pdf document)
The Royal Bounty Archive - a guide for family historians. (pdf document)