The Great Britain Historical Database has been assembled as part of the ongoing Great Britain Historical GIS Project. The project aims to trace the emergence of the north-south divide in Britain and to provide a synoptic view of the human geography of Britain at sub-county scales. Further information about the project is available on A Vision of Britain webpages, where users can browse the database's documentation system online. The Great Britain Historical GIS Project has also produced digitised boundary data, which can be obtained from the UK Data Service Census Support service. Further information is available at census.ukdataservice.ac.uk There are two tables in this part of the Great Britain Historical Database : S_debt holds data for about 500 individual courts in England and Wales grouped by circuit taken from Returns of proceedings in the county courts of England and Wales. There are continuous annual series for 1868 to 1913, plus data for 1847, 1851 to 1857 and 1866. Sd_1938 holds data for 439 county courts in England and Wales taken from the statistical returns of county courts for 1938. Please note: this study does not include information on named individuals and would therefore not be useful for personal family history research.