Actually it’s not just a search engine for UK media but a nicely-put-together set of tools. Kudos to Martin Belam, who created Chipwrapper, available in beta at http://www.chipwrapper.co.uk/ .

So what kind of tools? Chipwrapper starts with a Google Custom Search that searches a variety of newspapers and news sources in the UK, including BBS, The Scotsman, The Telegraph, and The Times. I liked the quality of the results, but unfortunately as the results are for WEB and not NEWS, you can’t list them by date and you don’t get date of creation for the articles. (I would love to see a Google Custom News search.) On the upside you’ll probably getting more archive results here.

You don’t have to search to get news immediately, though. There’s a headline aggregator on the front page that shows current top headlines from several different sources. For an even more delineated look at the top stories, check out the Headline Buzz, which is seven of the most popular words in the UK’s headlines within the past hour. (click on those words and a Chipwrapper search will run for that word.) There’s a tag cloud also available for http://www.chipwrapper.co.uk/buzz/ .

There are several RSS feeds available for Chipwrapper (you can get a list at http://www.chipwrapper.co.uk/tools/rss_feeds.shtml .) There are also a couple of plugins and a toolbar button. Lots of tools here, all built around UK media search. Nicely done.