web-archive
UK Government Web Archive (The National Archives)
The National Archives' public archive of UK central-government websites, with billions of records reaching back to about 2003. Archived pages are opened through replay links in its Wayback-style viewer on webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk. It is the place to find old versions of gov.uk and departmental sites, especially while the main UK Web Archive is offline. The server rejected our automated checks, so behaviour may be inconsistent; use the website directly.
No programmatic check, opens the archive’s own search.
Why it’s useful & how it works
The UK Government Web Archive is the authoritative source for old versions of British central-government websites, including departmental pages, consultations, and official publications that have since been removed or reorganised. Its collection reaches back to around 1996 for some sites and covers the full breadth of gov.uk and predecessor domains. Echo links you to the archive's Wayback-style replay viewer, where you enter the original URL and browse captures by date. The viewer handles navigation within an archived site much like the Internet Archive's interface.
What’s inside
The archive holds over one billion government web documents, with continuous collection from the mid-1990s through to the present across all UK central-government web properties.
API access
OpenWayback replay + Memento TimeMap /ukgwa/timemap/link/<url> (our GET rejected with 405).
What we measured
Our own probes, not the archive’s own claims. Re-run periodically; every reading below is dated.
Reachability
- Direct request
- Blocked HTTP 405 55 ms
- Through a datacenter proxy
- Unreachable 874 ms (fetch failed: Request was cancelled.)
- API, direct
- Blocked HTTP 405 32 ms
- API, through a proxy
- Unreachable 254 ms (fetch failed: Request was cancelled.)
Reachability measured 2026-08-22.
Access
Catalogue link only, open the archive to search it yourself.