Barclays Group Archives preserves and provides access to records, in any format, with permanent business value or historic importance. Our aim is to maintain the Group's corporate memory.

Barclays has a long tradition of looking after its historical records, as you would expect from a bank that can trace its history back to 1690. An award-winning history, based on research of the archives and on interviews with executives, was published in 2001 under the title Barclays: the Business of Banking 1690-1996.

The Archives contain records of: 

• Barclays Bank, its departments, local head offices and branches from incorporation as a limited company in 1896.
  
  
• Barclays Bank International, established in 1925 as Barclays Bank (Dominion, Colonial and Overseas) and its constituent banks (Anglo-Egyptian, Colonial Bank, National Bank of South Africa). These records contain much information on the development of the countries in which Barclays was represented (Caribbean, west and southern Africa, Egypt, Palestine).
                
• The founding banks of the 1896 amalgamation – there are particularly good series of records for Barclay, Bevan and  Co  (London), Gurney and Co (East Anglia), Goslings (London) and  Backhouse and Co (Darlington). The records date from the eighteenth century.
  
  
• Banks taken over after 1896 – there are 173 banks in the Barclays family, the main ones being:
  
  -Bank of Liverpool (founded 1831), and Martins (founded c1717), a London partnership that amalgamated with the Bank of Liverpool in 1918 to become Martins Bank Limited
  
  -London, Provincial & South Western Bank (an amalgamation of two banks founded in 1862 and 1864 respectively)
  
  -United Counties (founded 1836)
  
  -Union Bank of Manchester (founded 1836)
  
  
• The Woolwich, formerly Woolwich Building Society (founded 1847), together with societies acquired by Woolwich prior to its absorption by Barclays in 2000.

The archives are listed on a database, which is accessible on site to searchers and contains over 55,000 entries.

Barclays Group Archives has developed an active oral history programme - tapes and transcripts of many of these interviews are available.

As well as the main archives, there is a good reference library of banking histories, reference books and staff magazines. This library is available daily for use by researchers, students and the public.