Celebrating our collections dating from 780AD to the present day
By Georgia, Record Office Volunteer Spanning the years 1771 to 2003, the collection of deeds relating to The Midhurst Club tell the history of a long-standing property on Midhurst’s North Street. Although the collection is titled ‘Deeds relating to The Midhurst Club, Midhurst’, there is almost two hundred years of deed history before the Club…
Continue reading ➞ Finding stories in property deeds: A history of The Midhurst Club
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
In September 2017 I was asked if I would like to be involved in a project to catalogue information about Railway employees. As someone with a lifelong interest in and passion for the Railways, initially as a young trainspotter at Surbiton on the Southern Region of BT and then at various times during my professional…
Chosen by Keith Lawson, volunteer I have volunteered at West Sussex Record Office for a number of years now. A couple of years ago, I was asked to catalogue a collection of 116 valuation books compiled by Wyatt and Son, who were Agricultural Valuers and Auctioneers. Established in 1826, Wyatt and Son moved to Baffins Hall, Chichester,…
Continue reading ➞ Wyatt and Son valuation book no 41, 1914-1917 (AM 692/112)
Chosen by Linda Bowen, volunteer I have been a volunteer at West Sussex Record Office for eight years and, during that time, have transcribed very many Petworth House records, amongst other things. I also took part in the Record Office's externally-funded 'Joining Up Our Heritage' project, which took place in 2009/2010, and it was during my research for this project…
Chosen by Margaret Clark, volunteer Milton Mount College, a girls’ boarding school, was founded in 1871 in Gravesend for the daughters of Congregational ministers. Later it was opened to all girls aged 8-18. In 1920 the school moved to Worth Park, a large Victorian mansion on the outskirts of Crawley, previously owned by the Montefiore…
Continue reading ➞ Milton Mount College production of ‘The Boy with a Cart’, 1955 (MMC 1/9/7/87)
Chosen by Sheila Rhodes, volunteer Edward Heron-Allen was a remarkable man. Born in London in 1861, Heron-Allen's interests were many and varied; a qualified solicitor, he was also an expert in violin making and cheirosophy (the art of reading a person's character through the formation of their hands and fingers), a published author of early science-fiction stories and…
Chosen by Christine Chowne, volunteer John Holland Ballet Fletcher was a local man, born in 1879 in Worthing. He was the only surviving child of William H. B. Fletcher, former mayor of Worthing and later Lord of the Manor at Aldwick, now Hotham Park House, and his wife, Agnes. John read law at St…
Continue reading ➞ The Spread Eagle, Midhurst, 1902 (PH 26114/51)
Chosen by Ann Parsons, volunteer In this post we are featuring one of the many collections held at the Record Office that contain records relating to American history. As with many of the family archives in West Sussex, the White family papers include links to overseas estates and business that give us an insight into…
Chosen by Nicky Rutherford, Volunteer Prior to the Courts Act 1971, which replaced them and the assizes with a single permanent Crown Court, the courts of Quarter Sessions were local courts held 4 times a year since the 14th century. West Sussex Record Office holds the records of the Sussex Quarter Sessions, c1350-1914, and the…
West Sussex Record Office 