The Manorial Documents Register (MDR) is the official index to English and Welsh manorial records and provides brief descriptions of documents and details of their locations in public and private hands. The National Archives at Kew now provide online access to this resource. Manorial documents include court rolls, surveys, maps, terriers, documents and books of every description relating to the boundaries, franchises, wastes, customs or courts of a manor.

Reports from the "Hoo Peninsula Historic Landscape Project" are currently available to download online, via the Historic England website.

British History Online provides a digital version of "A history of the County of Kent: volume 2", originally published in 1926. This volume deals with the religious houses of Kent, including accounts of the early history of Canterbury and Rochester cathedrals.

I came across this video (slightly dated) on the weekend where the London and Surrey 'Earth Mysteries' groups have a day trip around some of the Kentish prehistoric sites.

For a short period of time the Oxford Dictionary of Family Names has made its database available for free. "This huge, new dictionary is the ultimate reference work on family names of the UK, covering English, Scottish, Welsh, Irish, Cornish, and immigrant surnames. It includes every surname that currently has more than 100 bearers, and those that had more than 20 bearers in the 1881 census."

The National Archives are making digital records available on their website free of charge for as long as our Kew site is closed to visitors. Registered users will be able to order and download up to ten items at a time, to a maximum of 50 items over 30 days. The limits are there to try and help manage the demand for content and ensure the availability of our digital services for everyone.

In response to the challenges created by the global public health crisis of COVID-19, Project MUSE is pleased to support its participating publishers in making scholarly content temporarily available for free on our platform. With many higher education institutions moving into an exclusively online learning environment for the foreseeable future, we hope that easy access to vetted research in the humanities and social sciences, from a variety of distinguished university presses, societies, and related not-for-profit publishers, will help to support teaching, learning, and knowledge discovery for users worldwide.

The UK has rainfall records dating back 200 years or so, but the vast majority of these are in handwritten form and can't easily be used to analyse past periods of flooding and drought. The Rainfall Rescue Project is seeking volunteers to transfer all the data into online spreadsheets. You're not required to rummage through old bound volumes as the Met Office has already scanned the necessary documents - all 65,000 sheets.

British History Online provides online access to "The History and Topographical Survey of the County of Kent", volumes 1 to 12, by Edward Hasted and originally published in 1797.

We've just had news from the Society of Antiquaries of Newcastle upon Tyne. Their journal Archaeologia Aeliana is now available online for free.

The KM Group digital archive is available online. It has been expanded to include the newspapers from both the First and Second World Wars. The archive provides a fascinating insight into Kent’s leading role in the Great War, World War II (especially the Battle of Britain) and will prove an invaluable tool for anyone interested in the period.