Search East Lothian’s Local History

We’ve created a new local history search tool, including natural history. It is focused on the major history websites in East Lothian – featuring naturally John Gray Centre, East Lothian Antiquarians and the East Lothian 4th Statistical Account, alongside some of the other local history societies that publish actively.

The search tool leverages Google’s search engine and lends itself to simple or complex search. Simple queries can be done in the usual fashion: phantassie or using quotes for compound search expressions “ice houses”. To force the inclusion of a keyword use “+rennie” and use a negative sign “-houston” to limit results.

You can search specific file types.To retrieve pdf-only articles you can use the following:-

filetype:pdf “free gardeners”

This will restrict the search to the PDF file type and the quotes will restrict the search to an exact match.

If nothing is found relax your criteria, but if you find that you get too many results tight the criteria, by using quotes as per the examples above or by restricting your search with a negative sign e.g.

gilmerton -“walled garden”

If you know of a rich local history website that ought to be included, let us know.