Scottish Post Office directories

Scottish Post Office directories provide a perfect basis for researching Scotland's family, trade, and town history

  • Victorian man holding an unrolled poster
  • Victorian man holding an unrolled poster
  • Victorian man holding an unrolled poster

Over 700 digitised directories covering most of Scotland and dating from 1773 to 1911 are available here for you to use.

With their alphabetical list of a location's inhabitants and information on their profession and address, the directories enable you easily to find out where people lived at a certain time and how they earned their living.

In each directory you can:

  • Browse and search by place, year and resident's name
  • View page by page
  • View a PDF of the complete book
  • Search the full PDF text
  • Download files for free within our copyright regulations (non-commercial use only).

The oldest volumes we have digitised were published in the late 1700s, when the demand for information about the increasing number of traders, businesses and industries grew rapidly.

Most of the directories were published annually.

This makes them a valuable resource, especially for the years not covered by the census which, starting in 1841, was only carried out every 10 years.