Celebrating our collections dating from 780AD to the present day
By Katherine Slay, Archive Assistant, and Graham P, Project Volunteer. Graham P, one of the volunteers working on the railway employee cards project, listed all the cards where the surname began with the letter ‘F’. He did an extensive analysis of the results, and also picked out some noteworthy entries. Extracts appear below; the longer…
Continue reading ➞ The Railway Card Project: F surname cards
By Katherine Slay, Archives Assistant In our latest blog post, Katherine Slay explains more about our on-going project to catalogue the tens of thousands of employee cards of the Southern England Railway company. These are gradually being made available whilst being indexed at the same time. Family historians will be able to find out more…
Continue reading ➞ The Railway Card Project: ‘B’ surname cards
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…
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
To mark the centenary of the end of the First World War, staff at West Sussex Record Office have shared their stories of family members who were caught up in the conflict. Edward Dare Evans, my great grandfather, was born on 21 February 1875. He was the fifth child of six, and his father William…
Continue reading ➞ WW1 Centenary: Staff Stories, Edward Dare Evans
West Preston Manor School, Rustington - South Africa scrapbooks (WPM 1/5/2-5) West Preston Manor School in Rustington was opened in September 1933 by Miss Dorothy Boykett, who remained as headmistress until the school closed in July 1979. There were 15 pupils to start with, aged from about 6 to 12 and including four small boys,…
I had assumed that every patient who died in a UK war hospital during World War 1 would have a Commonwealth War Graves Commission (CWGC) headstone, but I was wrong….. I am cataloguing the records of Graylingwell Hospital in Chichester, among which are some items about Graylingwell War Hospital (1915-1919). There are no existing formal…
Continue reading ➞ In Remembrance – Driver George Slater – Graylingwell War Hospital – WW1
Chosen by Katherine Slay, member of staff This photograph shows Eric Pashley flying a bi-plane on the day he won the Shell Trophy at Shoreham in July 1914. In the foreground are the parked vehicles of some of those who had come to watch the flying race. Powered flight was still in its infancy at…
Continue reading ➞ Pashley bi-plane at Shoreham airfield, July 1914 (AM625/3/15)
West Sussex Record Office 