Free search of over a million borehole records.

The BGS Borehole record viewer offers direct, online access to the National Geoscience Data Centre collection of onshore scanned boreholes, shafts and well records.

What is a borehole record?

A record of boreholes, shafts and wells from all forms of drilling and site investigation work. Boreholes range from one metre to several thousand metres deep.

Borehole records are produced from a geologist's or surveyor's observations of the rock core extracted from the ground. It typically includes locality, lithological descriptions with depth and thickness.

Other on-site measurements that may be noted are:

geophysical logs

Abbreviations used in borehole/water well records

See also What is a borehole?

National well archive

Searching BGS borehole records also gives you access to the the National Well Record Collection. It contains more than 130 000 classified records of wells, boreholes and springs within England and Wales; a unique database of hydrogeological information.

On-site measurements that may be noted are:

water level measurements

geochemistry data

GeoIndex

Borehole record scans can also be obtained via GeoIndex, our map-based index that allows users to search for information about BGS data collections.

Terms of use

The borehole scans are delivered under the Open Government Licence, subject to the following acknowledgement accompanying the reproduced BGS materials: "Contains British Geological Survey materials © UKRI [year]".