Contact the Research team
We collaborate on research projects with a number of different partners, and we welcome suggestions for new projects and collaborations.
Resource pack - Extinction and hope: Navigating animal encounters in the archive
This resource pack was produced as part of the 2025 event series Research Routes: Emotions, senses and feelings in the archives. It includes information and links to research projects relating to animal histories in the archives.
Animal Histories in The National Archives collections
As the archive of the government, the records we hold on this subject mostly relate to human interactions with animals: through legislation and conservation policies, or copyrighting images. Records relating to game laws and licenses and their evolution into conservation and reserves often describe attempts to regulate animal hunting. We also hold photographs of individual animals. Many of these photos are in the series known as COPY 1, records of the Copyright Office with original forms of application for the registration of proprietorship under the Copyright Acts in force from 1842 to 1912. Other images can be found in INF 10, the British Empire Collection of Photographs.
Examples of animal fibres used to make textiles can also be found in the archives, including a Faroese wool sweater found in our Prize Papers collection. Some examples of records, include:
- COPY 1/501/32 A photograph of an American bull Bison taken at the Zoological Gardens, London, 1906
- COPY 1/56/341 A photograph of Jumbo the elephant, 1882
- E 101/376/7 A Royal Wardrobe and Household account book from 1309 to 1318, bound with ‘hair vellum’ likely made of calf skin
- FT 1/9 A Nature Conservancy species file for coypu, musks and beavers
- INF 10/369/4 A photograph of 'The rare white Rhino' in Uganda, August 1962, as part of a collection of photos compiled by Central Office of Information
- CO 536/147/11 A file on the preservation of white rhinoceros and proposed Uganda game preservation legislation, 1927-1932
We are developing a guide to researching environmental histories in our records, please look out for this soon on our website.
Heritage Science animal history projects
Read more about Marc Vermeulen’s work on a minimally invasive method to extract lipids from historical parchments.
Other examples of heritage science research projects exploring animals in historic documents include:
- Archivess, University of Copenhagen, exploring beeswax seals and the value for research into historic bee diversity and behaviour
- Beasts to Craft, Universities of Copenhagen and Bristol and the Royal Library of Denmark, researching the use of animal products in the creation of writing materials
Blog posts and articles
We regularly publish blog posts and articles on the stories behind and about our records. These can include stories about the presence of animals in the archive. Some examples include:
Further reading
- ‘From Habitat to Service Equipment: The British Government Book as Container in ‘the Tropics’ by Lucy Razzall, Lora Angelova, and Elizabeth Haines
- Vanished: An Unnatural History of Extinction, by Sadiah Quereshi
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