By Abigail Hartley, Searchroom Archivist I, like many others, watched heartbroken as the roof and spire burned during the recent fire at Notre Dame de Paris. Thankfully, many of the artworks and relics were rescued, no visitors were harmed, and the facades and majestic bell towers are structurally stable. I took this as a sign…
Author: West Sussex Record Office
Celebrating our collections dating from 780AD to the present day, and keeping you up to date with Record Office events
Faculties @ WSRO Continued…
By Katie Bishop, Searchroom Assistant Along with my colleague Imogen, I am undertaking the task of box listing church Facilities 1947-2002 (Ep 1/98).This means going through parish by parish and making a list of all the facilities we hold. Imogen discusses this work in more details and, crucially, explains what a faculty is in on…
An intro to Faculties @ WSRO
By Imogen Russell, Searchroom Assistant Though it is more the norm to write blogs on individual documents, I thought I’d talk about a series of records listed under our Episcopal collection, known as faculties. Faculties are permissions from the Diocese for parish churches to alter the fabric of their buildings. As the Diocesan Record Office,…
The anti-slavery movement in West Sussex
“Father came, in a great bustle for some slavery papers which he has to distribute,” wrote Rhoda Hack, from Chichester, in April 1824. This domestic update in her surroundings came as she penned the latest letter in her regular correspondence with her sister-in-law, Priscila Tuke (nee Hack). “What are you doing with this subject at…
International Women’s Day: The story of Nancy B. Birkett; an early Aviatrix in Shoreham
The 1920s and 1930s saw a huge advancement in flight engineering. With that, aviation mania swept Europe and America. Usually thought of as a male pursuit, flying planes quickly garnered fresh attention from the media as increasing numbers of women took to the skies. Amy Johnson and Amelia Earhart were just two of a number…
A is for…
In two earlier blog posts we talked about the ongoing project to catalogue Southern England Railway employee cards. We're very happy to announce that the railway employment cards for employees whose surname begins with the letter ‘A’ are now online in the Record Office catalogue http://www.westsussexpast.org.uk/searchonline/default.aspx and can be found by typing SEREC into the…
The train now leaving…
In September 2017 I was asked if I would like to be involved in a project to catalogue information about Railway employees. As someone with a lifelong interest in and passion for the Railways, initially as a young trainspotter at Surbiton on the Southern Region of BT and then at various times during my professional…
The High Sheriffs of Sussex
By Dr John Godfrey DL Caroline Nicholls, the current High Sheriff of West Sussex, and I are giving a talk at the Record Office on 26th February on The High Sheriffs of Sussex. I shall be talking about the history of the office, using materials from the Record Office’s collections, and Caroline will be speaking…
All aboard! Introducing the Southern England Railway Employee Cards project
One of the larger gifts to the Record Office in recent years has been from the British Railways Board in Derby. This comprises the personnel cards of all employees in its Southern Region. In the days before computers, cards were the way to store details of all the men and women who worked on the…
Continue reading ➞ All aboard! Introducing the Southern England Railway Employee Cards project
Digital Preservation Diary 2: Getting to know you…
‘Getting to know you’ is an apt title for what I’ve been up to these past two months. In my previous blog post, I described the importance of getting to know your digital records – understanding what you’ve got and how much you’ve got – and I really feel like we’re getting there at WSRO.…
Continue reading ➞ Digital Preservation Diary 2: Getting to know you…
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