In 2016, West Sussex Record Office has been marking its 70th Anniversary. In celebration, we asked our users, depositors, volunteers, supporters and staff to explore the archive and nominate their favourite document. We published a booklet featuring these 70 archives on Sussex Day (16th June) and here on this blog, we offered a little more space for those who picked the 70 records to write an extended version of their reasons for highlighting their particular archive.
Over the past 6 months, we have seen guest blogs from many friends of the Record Office, including Lady Emma Barnard of Parham House, Anthony Cane, Chancellor of Chichester Cathedral, and James Peill, Curator at Goodwood House.
As we come to the end of sharing our favourite records with you, our celebrations will be culminating tomorrow (Saturday 12th November) with our 70th Anniversary Open Day as part of the ‘Explore Your Archive’ campaign. The Open Day (10am-4pm) is a public event and we will be offering a variety of activities and displays including tours of the office (behind the scenes of our strong rooms, conservation and digitisation work), an archival film show produced by Screen Archive South East, family and military history advice desks, archive exhibitions and promotional material about our recent partnership projects with Chichester Festival Theatre, the University of Chichester, Queen Victoria Hospital and the Shoreham Community Archive.
We would like to thank everyone who has followed this blog over the past few months, and shown such interest in our favourite records. We hope to welcome as many of you as possible to the Record Office tomorrow, where we will have many of the 70 records out on display, along with many other highlights from the collections.
Follow the fun on Facebook and Twitter, where we will be live tweeting the event, and sharing updates throughout the day.
Lauren Clifton
West Sussex Record Office 