Celebrating our collections dating from 780AD to the present day
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)
Lesley Sim, Information Services Manager, West Sussex County Council Eric Gill was a prolific artist: a sculptor, engraver, calligrapher, draughtsman and writer. Although he is often associated with the village of Ditchling in East Sussex, he had a strong connection to Chichester, moving here with his family in 1897; he lived at 2 North Walls…
Continue reading ➞ Eric Gill’s ‘London box’, c1940 (Eric Gill 353)
Chosen by Jennifer Mason, member of staff This register, from the archive of Marine and General Mutual Life Assurance Society of Worthing, provides a fascinating insight into life at sea in the 19th century. The entries record the far-flung cities sailors visited, from Alexandria to Hong Kong, Bombay to Balaklava. The volume also records the…
Continue reading ➞ Marine and General Mutual register of life claims, 1853-1895 (Acc 17933)
Chosen by Wendy Walker, County Archivist For generations, artists and writers have found inspiration in the West Sussex landscape and details of their lives can sometimes be found in the most unexpected places. The poet and artist William Blake (author of ‘Jerusalem’ and ‘The Tyger’) makes an interesting appearance in the Quarter Sessions court…
Continue reading ➞ The Indictment of William Blake, 1803 (QR/W643)
Chosen by Imogen Russell, member of staff Those tracing their family history within the Church of England will find that it is fairly straightforward, discovering baptisms, marriages and deaths in the parish registers held at the Record Office. However it is not always clear how you search for families who subscribed to a religion…
Continue reading ➞ Non-conformist records: Bosham Congregational Church Book (NC /C1/2/1)
Chosen by Richard Mant, researcher This is a copy in English of the entry for 12 March 1611 in the Court Book for the Manors of Woolavington, Wonworth and East Dean, dealing with the surrender of land by Edmund Maunt at the court baron in East Dean. The book covers the period 3 Oct 1597-28…
Chosen by James Gaffney, member of staff This is the original Master Plan for Crawley New Town, one of eight new ‘satellite’ towns created by the Government in the late 1940s on the outskirts of London. The aim of these new towns was to encourage people to relocate from an over-crowded capital, which had been…
Continue reading ➞ The Birth of Crawley; Master plan for Crawley New Town, 1947 (Par 60/26/4)
Chosen by Kim Leslie, former member of staff This coaching poster is dated about 1828, when Worthing was an important coaching centre between Brighton and Portsmouth. Stage coaching was at its peak between 1820 and 1840, a time when many coach proprietors were locked in furious competition to outbid each other’s reputation for speed, comfort…
Chosen by the Reception Team Parish registers are wonderful documents which record some of the happiest and saddest moments in people’s lives. This very early register is what is known as a composite register; unlike modern day registers, which are separated into different volumes for baptisms, marriages, and burials, this contains all three!…
Continue reading ➞ Composite parish register, Horsham, 1540-1563 (Par 106/1/1/1)
Chosen by Nichola Court, member of staff The 1601 Poor Law Act created a national system for managing the poor. It was superseded in 1834 by the New Poor Law, which compelled unions of parishes to build that most Victorian of institutions: the workhouse. In a bid to keep the poor rate to a minimum,…
Continue reading ➞ Plan of East Preston workhouse, 1872 (WG9/56/1/2 no.3)
West Sussex Record Office 