THE 1901 Census website created by QinetiQ has been a great success, with more than 37 million successful searches made since it was relaunched last year.

Its latest feature is that the site, at www.census. pro.gov.uk, could tell you who was living in your house or street on the night of March 31, 1901.

The new address search facility enables family historians, local historians and researchers to find specific addresses, streets, or named buildings such as public houses, post offices and cottages on the online database.

The original handwritten entry then provides further details of who was there, their occupation, age, sex, their relationship to the head of the household and where they were born.

The task of digitising the census and creating an index for over 32 million names, spanning almost 1.5 million pages was the result of a contract between QinetiQ and the Public Record Office.

Searches are free, users only pay when they download images of the original census return or transcripts. Costs are 75p (image) or 50p (transcript).