Celebrating our collections dating from 780AD to the present day
By Victoria Evans, Searchroom Archivist Across West Sussex there are many historic pubs that are the cornerstone to village life and community. In this brief blog post we will be focusing in on and exploring two of the oldest in the county: The George and Dragon in Houghton. This pub dates to the 13th century,…
By Mia Curtis-Mays, Archives Assistant CPS 1780/2 The beginning of the Corn Exchange The Corn Exchange in East Street, Chichester, was erected in 1832 to be a marketplace for local farmers, corn merchants and millers. Due to the lack of interest in the corn market by the corporation, farmers and corn merchants took matters into…
Continue reading ➞ Chichester’s Cinematic History at The Corn Exchange
By Lois Bodie, Archives Assistant You can learn a great deal about a place and its history by focusing on one particular point and charting its change. For me, I have grown increasingly interested in the history of St Martin’s Street in Chichester, only a minute or two by foot from the medieval Market Cross.…
Continue reading ➞ In the Heart of Chichester: A Glimpse into the History of St Martin’s Street
By Victoria Evans, Searchroom Archivist Following on from last year's blog post about what Christmas was like at Chichester Workhouse, this year we will be exploring how the festive period was celebrated at Graylingwell Hospital specifically during World War One. Once again, we have turned to a newspaper article to give us a glimpse into…
By Victoria Evans, Searchroom Archivist SSW 16 - Storrington: St Mary's Church, 18 Sep 1927. Walk: Steyning - Storrington - Pulborough With our recent push to digitise glass plate negatives to further increase accessibility while ensuring the long-term preservation of the originals, the Society of Sussex Wealdmen collection (catalogued as SSW) is now available on…
By Jenny Bettger, Archives Assistant (Research) Workhouse records can give an insight into the lives and struggles of the poorest members of the population. In the admission and discharge registers, you will often find the same names popping up with surprising regularity. From the brief descriptions of their reasons for entering or leaving, you can…
By Victoria Evans, Searchroom Archivist 🎃 Halloween is upon us and in today’s blog post we will be taking a peek into some of the ghostly occurrences that can be teased out from our collections. 👻 St Cuthman’s School The Victorian mansion that went onto house school children was originally built in 1876 for Alexander…
By Nick Corbo-Stewart, Archivist With the new season now underway, in this article we feature some of the items from our diverse West Sussex Record Office (WSRO) collections related to the game. They present to the researcher a sense of the investment, dedication, competition and excitement generated by the football season across Sussex: Collection title:…
By Mia Curtis-Mays, Archives Assistant I am currently part of a digitisation project scanning the glass negatives from the Chichester Photographic Services collection (CPS). Through wanting to find out more about the collection I was working on, I discovered that the founder of Chichester Photographic Services has a legacy in the realms of film and…
Continue reading ➞ Harry Guermonprez: Founder of Chichester Photographic Services Ltd
By Louise Conway, Archives Assistant Part 1 of the Shoreham Bungalow Town blog introduced the area and it’s developments (read it here), this blog focuses on how this small area became, for a small time, ‘the Los Angeles of British productions’. Sunny South Film Company 1914 – 1915 The first film company in Shoreham was…
Continue reading ➞ Shoreham Bungalow Town – Part 2: Filmmaking
West Sussex Record Office 