“Who lived in your house in 1911?” the site asks. Um, probably a squirrel, as the house I am living in was not so much a house at the time as a stand of pine trees. But if you’re doing some genealogical searching for UK ancestors, perhaps you’ll get a better answer. The 1911 UK census, which covers 36 million people living in England and Wales that year, is now available at www.1911census.co.uk. It’s 80% online at the moment with the remainder expected in the next few months.

This is not a completely free site. To search is free. To view, that will cost you. If you have an England/Wales address you want to check, you can search that way, or you can do a search by name. I did a search for Wodehouse. Yup, there’s good old Pelham G, 29 years old and living in London. He was one of 127 Wodehouse names that came up in the results.

This is all you get for free. If you want to get more information you can either review a transcript of the available records or view a page image. The transcripts cost 10 credits to review while the original pages cost 30. Now, the credits THEMSELVES cost between 8p and 12p depending on how many you buy. So if you bought the 12p credits, and looked at a transcript, it would cost you £1.20, which Google tells me is about $1.74 in US dollars.

You’ll need to register to buy credits. Once registered you’ll be able to use the credits here and on FindMyPast.com. A help page for the 1911 census mentions that FindMyPast.com might have a subscription service sometime this year, but there’s nothing about the census site itself.