Celebrating our collections dating from 780AD to the present day
By Victoria Evans. Searchroom Archivist In our ongoing efforts to list all of our building plans from across the county, I kept coming across America Lane and New England Road within the Cuckfield Urban District plans. From this, I searched Google Maps and found other America-related named roads such as Washington Road, Pilgrims Gardens, Boston…
By Victoria Evans, Searchroom Archivist, in collaboration with Jennifer Mason, Senior Archivist (Collections Manager), and Linda and Catherine, WSRO cataloguing volunteers Within our Episcopal Records, the miscellaneous court papers (MCPs) are a set of documents that have remained largely unknown to us, as they have been in too poor a condition to enable them to…
Continue reading ➞ Cataloguing the Miscellaneous Court Papers
By Victoria Evans, Searchroom Archivist On a recent walk down the Chichester Canal heading towards Hunston, I was told about the Carmelite Convent that housed a closed-order nun community between 1872 until 1994 which I had not heard of, even after living in Chichester for three years now! This sparked inspiration to see what we…
By Victoria Evans, Searchroom Archivist Inspired by April's Explore Your Archive theme of crime, we have delved into a police charge register (POL/W/HQ/4/1) dated between March 1857–February 1866 from the headquarters of the West Sussex Constabulary. Many crimes that appear in this register were theft and the destruction of clothing provided by the workhouse to…
Continue reading ➞ A Victorian Crime in Washington, West Sussex
By Victoria Evans, Searchroom Archivist For this year’s International Women’s Day, the theme is ‘Give to Gain’. Throughout the Second World War, the women of Britain and beyond sacrificed a lot, and some their lives, to ensure that our nation maintained its freedom from the impending threat of Nazi invasion. Additionally, the acts of brave…
By Victoria Evans, Searchroom Archivist Across West Sussex there are many historic pubs that are the cornerstone to village life and community. In this brief blog post we will be focusing in on and exploring two of the oldest in the county: The George and Dragon in Houghton. This pub dates to the 13th century,…
By Victoria Evans, Searchroom Archivist Following on from last year's blog post about what Christmas was like at Chichester Workhouse, this year we will be exploring how the festive period was celebrated at Graylingwell Hospital specifically during World War One. Once again, we have turned to a newspaper article to give us a glimpse into…
By Victoria Evans, Searchroom Archivist SSW 16 - Storrington: St Mary's Church, 18 Sep 1927. Walk: Steyning - Storrington - Pulborough With our recent push to digitise glass plate negatives to further increase accessibility while ensuring the long-term preservation of the originals, the Society of Sussex Wealdmen collection (catalogued as SSW) is now available on…
By Victoria Evans, Searchroom Archivist 🎃 Halloween is upon us and in today’s blog post we will be taking a peek into some of the ghostly occurrences that can be teased out from our collections. 👻 St Cuthman’s School The Victorian mansion that went onto house school children was originally built in 1876 for Alexander…
By Victoria Evans, Searchroom Archivist IIn the first part, I delved into the all-important context behind the Auxiliary Territorial Service (ATS) and what other related treasures can be found in our archive. If you didn’t catch it you can read it here. In this second and final part, I will be sharing the more personal…
Continue reading ➞ The Auxiliary Territorial Service in West Sussex – Part Two