Celebrating our collections dating from 780AD to the present day
Chosen by Susan Millard, member of staff This anonymous letter was addressed to the Duke of Richmond and was sent to his estate at Goodwood. We can see from the reverse page that it was considered important enough to be forwarded to his London home. Such letters, written during the agricultural disturbances in the winter…
Continue reading ➞ ‘Swing Riots letter’, 2 Dec 1830 (Goodwood Mss 1446 fA18)
Chosen by Lady Emma Barnard This remarkable notebook was kept by my great-aunt Veronica, the daughter of Clive and Alicia Pearson, who lived at Parham. Veronica deposited it with West Sussex Record Office before her death in 1993; it is a moving record of wartime life on the estate, a vignette of an extraordinary time.…
Continue reading ➞ ‘Parham in the War’, 1940-1947 (Parham 1/4/10/3/3)
Chosen by Holly Wright, member of staff These Ministry of Food recipe leaflets were produced during World War 2 to help the nation make the most of their food in spite of rationing, a necessary measure first enforced on 8th January 1940 as a result of the enemy bombing or blockading of the supply ships heading for…
Continue reading ➞ World War 2 Ministry of Food recipe leaflets (Add Mss 54,872)
Chosen by Joyce Sleight, researcher Some years ago I attended a talk on the work of WSRO at Worthing Library given by a member of the Searchroom staff. In the informal chat that followed I mentioned that as a history teacher and librarian at Steyning Grammar School I had charge of some of the school archive. He…
Continue reading ➞ Steyning School Register, 1840-1876 (Acc 10206)
Chosen by Andrew Rackley, member of staff Archives aren’t all about paper. Technology has changed significantly over the last 70 years and the Record Office has been changing with it. As records are increasingly produced solely in a digital format (‘born-digital’), the content held here increasingly goes beyond what you might think of as traditional…
Continue reading ➞ Billingshurst Oral History Project collection, 2015 (Acc 18164)
Chosen by Annabelle Hughes, researcher I came across this deed in my work as a researcher of historic buildings. I had been trying to find a link between what was thought to be an early 19th century house in Thakeham called Cumberland House and an earlier farm dating from around 1349 belonging to William Payn,…
Continue reading ➞ Deed of Paines in Thakeham, 1799 (Add Mss 198)
Chosen by Bill Gage, member of staff I found this poster whilst I was researching the history of the Selsey Tram which operated from 1897 until its closure in 1935. The Selsey Tram, as it was known locally, was in fact a light railway which ran from Chichester all the way down the Selsey Peninsula.…
Continue reading ➞ Brighton Railway (Selsey Tramway) poster, c.1910 (Add Mss 13773)
Chosen by Tim Hudson, former Victoria County History Editor Incumbents of Anglican parishes must often keep lists of their parishioners with details about them; but most probably destroy them when they move on, as being too private and personal. The West Sussex Record Office has two such lists, compiled by the same man first as…
Continue reading ➞ Incumbent’s register of parishioners, c.1850 (Par 174/7/1)
Chosen by Simon Hopkins, member of staff Early in 2006 I was called by the architect managing a redevelopment to the Almshouses in St Mary’s Hospital, St Martin’s Square, Chichester. Builders had removed the original partition walls, fixtures and fittings, and thrown them into skips. Partitions had been broken in half to remove them and,…
Continue reading ➞ A partition wall from St Mary’s hospital almshouses, c.1802 onwards (Acc 13567)
Chosen by Matthew Jones, member of staff We can get a very personal insight into someone’s life by looking through their probate records, and inventories can be the most fascinating of all. We have over 12,000 probate inventories and one of them relates to Mary Cooper, a widow of Midhurst who ran a brewhouse in…
Continue reading ➞ Probate inventory for Mary Cooper of Midhurst, 1743 (Ep/I/29/138/235)
West Sussex Record Office 