Celebrating our collections dating from 780AD to the present day
By Dr Caroline Adams - Guest Speaker In the late 16th century, the estimated population of Chichester was about 4000 residents (now it’s about 33,000). Four thousand is about the same population as some of the present-day villages around Chichester – Tangmere or Fishbourne, for example. When you walk around those villages, it feels quite…
Continue reading ➞ Tuesday Talk: The material culture of life in Elizabethan Chichester
By Victoria Evans, Searchroom Archivist At the end of this blog, please find an update containing my thoughts on the film and comparisons to the real-life case. With the upcoming release of ‘Wicked Little Letters’ set for the 23rd of February; we thought it best to delve into the true backstory of this poison-pen case…
By Alice Millard, archivist Toussaint Louverture on horseback, 1802, anon. The Met. Before Haiti was so named it was called Saint Domingue, having been colonised by the Spanish in the 15th century then controlled by the French in the 17th century. As with most other Caribbean islands at the time, Saint Domingue's economy was dependent…
Continue reading ➞ The Mysterious Truth of Toussaint Louverture Jr in Chichester
By Victoria Evans, Searchroom Archivist Sunset over Cavendish Street, taken by author Having moved to Chichester recently to take up the role of Searchroom Archivist at the West Sussex Record Office, I have been developing my different branches of research that our researchers utilise. Although doing such exercises enables me to provide a better service,…
Continue reading ➞ A Brief History of Cavendish Street – using maps
By Victoria Evans, Searchroom Archivist In the 1940s two sisters, Amy and Nellie Scaddan, evacuated to the safety of the Petworth countryside from Portsmouth. Although it was more commonplace for children to be evacuated, these sisters were most likely in their 40s during this time and also wanted to take refuge somewhere that would not…
Continue reading ➞ A Wartime Christmas in the Petworth Countryside
By Catherine Tite, Volunteer Over the course of 2023, many volunteers devote their time to listing and cataloguing the collections of West Sussex Record Office (WSRO). Catherine, a regular volunteer, recently completed a project to do this with the papers, notes and photographs of former Bognor Regis and Barnham resident Edmond Martin Venables. An amateur…
Continue reading ➞ West Sussex Polymath: Edmond Martin Venables 1901-1990
By Alan Green - Guest Speaker In this talk local historian and author Alan Green will, with the aid of Stella Palmer’s slides and some others, take you on a tour of the city as it was fifty years ago; a city preparing for pedestrianisation but still ruled by the motor car. You will see…
Please note that this blog post contains some graphic descriptions of injury. By Victoria Evans, Searchroom Archivist Working in an archive allows you the opportunity to stumble upon unexpected pieces of history and how it was recorded. As we answer enquiries on all manner of subjects it is sometimes too easy to fall down a…
Continue reading ➞ Murder, They Wrote…in the register of baptisms
Ian Everest - Guest Speaker Some forty years ago Ian Everest started out on the journey of researching his family history and just like many others who embark on the same path, his life has never been the same since! It brought about change of career into an occupation which was directly related to his…
Continue reading ➞ Tuesday Talk: The Women’s Land Army – a Sussex connection
Manor Royal is a distinctive district of Crawley. It was earmarked early in the New Town's planning stage as the perfect area to contain the town's industrial pursuits. From its opening in the early 1950s, it has been home to factories, big and small, large warehouses, and offices. However, where once the district was a…
Continue reading ➞ Cataloguing Crawley New Town: An Industrial Haven
West Sussex Record Office 