Family history in England

FreeCen has English census records. You can view them on Ancestry but you have to have a subscription. FreeBMD is useful for post-registration birth, marriages and deaths.

FamilySearch is also useful for parish records and some census records.

I've traced my dad's family back to 1490; it was a bit of work but not too difficult.

Our public library has paid for ancestry so it’s free to use there (when library opens again)

I get Ancestry through my library site free in Scotland . familysearch.org is free online as well . You will gt a free couple of weeks for paid Ancestry .

Free Reg and Parish Clerks Online are free and useful. I have contacted relatives to supplement info having subscribed to Find My Past which imo is brilliant.

Familyserch may be free but it often sends you to a paid website to get the actual information, which is frustrating. I would just bite the bullet and pay for a month on Ancestry. It's only £13.99 unless you want worldwide. You can cancel before the month is over. You can download hundreds of parish registers and census returns to your computer in a month. This can save a lot of money ordering marriage certificates (£11 each) because many of them are on Ancestry.

Ancestry is the way to go you will spend far more on travelling, at present you can’t travel anyway, everything is closed.

Thanks, everyone. I’ll get started!

Just to say, when you search Ancestry will literally throw the information at you, but take great care the record you are saving is for the right person. Don't take information from other people's trees as about half of them are complete nonsense. People don't check things, instead they copy from inaccurate trees. Do the research yourself so you know it's correct.

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It’s very difficult, I got diverted as I followed the maternal line as I think it’s more accurate. It’s much easier through the paternal, church records are very useful as christening, wedding and deaths were all recorded, that is if the couple were married, a lot didn’t. Good luck.
Greyit how wonderful finding your grandfather, I bet he was thrilled. Did you get on together? Well done.

You can use the Libraries for research but the problem is you only get one hour and then you are cut off.
It's hit and miss with free sites and everything isn't transcribed anyhow.
If you can travel to the archives local to the ancestors the information will be there and relatively easy back to post registration. Although the 1939 registry didn't show a number of my relies.
Parish records are another thing, they quite often just show the bride not always with a surname and a groom full name and nothing else. There is mostly a question mark on is this really your ancestor because the information is not there to confirm it.
When researching at the back of your mine should always be can I prove this person with good source material is my ancestor.
Don't ever bother with other peoples trees most of them are complete rubbish.
I've had one persons tree saying my grandmother had gone to the USA and died there. She had never traveled further in her life many miles from where she was born. My grandmother came up again in someone else's tree, clearly copied from another tree.