Terms of use

The short version

Our Centuries is free. You don’t need an account and you aren’t buying anything.
Use it to look, learn and teach. Share a link as often as you like. Please don’t copy the whole site or pass our work off as yours.
We work hard to get history right, say where every claim comes from and say how sure anyone can be. We can’t promise everything is complete or error-free, and new finds change what is known.
Quotations, maps and data from other people stay theirs and keep their own terms. See licences and credits.
English law applies. Your legal rights as a consumer are not affected by anything here.

1. Who we are

Our Centuries, at ourcenturies.com, is run by FALLINGHIPPO LIMITED, which trades as FallingHippo. In these terms “we”, “us” and “our” mean that company, and “the site” means ourcenturies.com and every page and file on it.

Item	Details
Company	FALLINGHIPPO LIMITED, registered in England and Wales
Company number	17415391
Registered office	71-75 Shelton Street, London, England, WC2H 9JQ
Email	[email protected]
VAT	We are not registered for VAT

2. About these terms

By using the site you agree to these terms. If you don’t agree, please don’t use it. They sit alongside our privacy policy, cookies and storage page and licences and credits.

3. Who can use the site

Anyone, anywhere, of any age. The site is written for curious readers of every age, including pupils, and their teachers and parents. You are responsible for the device and internet connection you use, and for any charges your provider makes.

4. How you may use the site

You may:

read, browse and learn from every page;
show pages to a class or group, on a screen or a whiteboard;
print or save a page for your own or classroom use;
quote short extracts with credit to Our Centuries and a link to the page;
link to any page.

5. What you must not do

You must not:

copy large parts of the site, or the whole of it, onto another website, into a book or into a product without our written permission;
pass our work off as your own, or remove credits and source notes;
use the site in a way that breaks the law, or that harms or tries to harm the site, its host or other visitors;
overload the site with automated requests, or scrape it in a way that affects other visitors;
try to get into parts of the site, our accounts or our hosting that you aren’t meant to reach;
suggest that we, or any museum, archive or scholar named on the site, has endorsed you or is connected to you.

6. Our name, logo and content

The site, its design, the writing, the diagrams and maps we have drawn, the data we have put together and the software that runs it belong to us or to the people who license them to us. “Our Centuries” and the hand mark are our trade marks. Where we have built on other people’s work, such as published translations, coastline data and open fonts, it keeps its owners’ rights and licences, and each is credited on the page and on the licences page.

7. Linking to the site

You may link to any page, as long as you do it fairly and legally and don’t suggest an endorsement that doesn’t exist. Please don’t show our pages inside a frame on another site.

8. Ideas, corrections and messages

If you spot a mistake, please tell us at [email protected] with “Correction” in the subject and the page. We read every message and list the corrections we make on the corrections page. If you send us an idea or a correction, you agree that we may use it without paying you, and we won’t name you unless you ask.

9. The information on the site

It is for learning. We take care over every fact, give a source for it, and say whether it is evidence, an informed reconstruction or a matter of debate. History is a field where new finds and new readings change the picture, so a page that was right when written can become out of date. Check the sources we give before relying on something for work that matters, such as publishing, examinations or legal and heritage decisions.

Maps and plans are simplified. Coastlines are today’s. Lines such as walls and roads are drawn from known positions and simplified. Plans are drawn to scale from published measurements, and we say so where something is drawn by eye.

Contested history. Where experts disagree, we set out the main views and who holds them. Presenting a view is not the same as agreeing with it.

10. Reporting security problems

If you think you have found a weakness in the site, please tell us at [email protected] before telling anyone else and give us a reasonable time to fix it. If you act in good faith, report what you found, don’t look at or change other people’s data, don’t disrupt the site and don’t ask for payment, we won’t take action against you. We can’t offer rewards.

11. Other people’s websites

The site links to other websites to show where information comes from. We don’t control them, we aren’t responsible for their content or their availability, and a link is not an endorsement.

12. What we are and aren’t promising

We provide the site free of charge, as it is and as available. We don’t promise it will always be available, uninterrupted or free of faults. We may change, add to or remove parts of it at any time.

13. Consumers and the law

Nothing in these terms affects the rights you have as a consumer under the law of the United Kingdom, including the Consumer Rights Act 2015, which cannot be excluded.

14. Our responsibility to you

We are responsible for loss or damage you suffer that is a foreseeable result of our breaking these terms or failing to use reasonable care and skill. We don’t exclude or limit our liability where it would be unlawful to do so, including for death or personal injury caused by our negligence, or for fraud. Because the site is free and for learning, and to the extent the law allows, we aren’t responsible for indirect losses or for business losses.

15. Suspending access

We may suspend or withdraw the site, or block access from a device or network that is attacking it or breaking these terms.

16. Your privacy

How we handle personal data is set out in our privacy policy. In short: we collect almost nothing.

17. Complaints and disputes

If you have a complaint about the site, please tell us first at [email protected]. We will usually reply within 5 working days, and we will try to put right anything that is our fault. If we can’t agree, you may use any other route the law gives you. For complaints about personal data, see section 18 of the privacy policy.

18. Which law applies

These terms, and any dispute or claim that comes out of them or the use of the site, are governed by the law of England and Wales. If you are a consumer, you may bring a claim in the courts of England and Wales, or, if you live in Scotland or Northern Ireland, in the courts where you live.

19. Other important terms

What this site is not. The site has no accounts, no comments, no messaging or posting between visitors and no search across other websites. It is not a “user-to-user service” or a “search service” for the purposes of the Online Safety Act 2023.
If a court finds part of these terms can’t be enforced, the rest still applies.
If we don’t enforce a term straight away, we can still enforce it later.
Only you and we have rights under these terms.

20. Changes to these terms

We may update these terms. The date at the top shows when they last changed. The version on the site when you use it applies.

11 November 2026. First version, written before the site’s launch.

21. Contact us

Questions, problems or requests to use our content: [email protected]. For anything about your personal data: [email protected]. You can also write to FALLINGHIPPO LIMITED, 71-75 Shelton Street, London, England, WC2H 9JQ, our registered office, though email is quicker.