Celebrating our collections dating from 780AD to the present day
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 Jenny Bettger, Archives Assistant (Research) Workhouse records can give an insight into the lives and struggles of the poorest members of the population. In the admission and discharge registers, you will often find the same names popping up with surprising regularity. From the brief descriptions of their reasons for entering or leaving, you can…
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 Nick Corbo-Stewart, Archivist With the new season now underway, in this article we feature some of the items from our diverse West Sussex Record Office (WSRO) collections related to the game. They present to the researcher a sense of the investment, dedication, competition and excitement generated by the football season across Sussex: Collection title:…
By Jenny Bettger, Archives Assistant (Research) Walking along Broyle Road in Chichester you will find a large stone with a faded inscription. Known as ‘The Smugglers Stone’, it records the execution of six members of the notorious Hawkhurst Gang in 1749. From their base in Kent, this gang controlled much of the smuggling trade along…
Continue reading ➞ Desperate Villains – The Hawkhurst Gang in West Sussex
By Alice Millard, Archivist To mark the recent upload of the Graylingwell Hospital Archive catalogue to our website, this blog will dip into the vast history of this significant hospital through its archives. Founding Before the establishment of lunatic asylums in the mid-19th century, people living in poverty with mental health issues were dealt with…
Continue reading ➞ The story of Graylingwell Hospital through its archives
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
By Nick Corbo-Stewart, Archivist and Volunteer Coordinator In this series of blogs looking at new collections at West Sussex Record Office (WSRO), I will continue to guide you, the reader, through the variety of work undertaken by the volunteers. Through a culmination of sorting, listing, ordering, cataloguing and packaging, their completed collections are now open…
By Victoria Evans, Searchroom Archivist Building further upon a blog post written six years ago we are delving back into the history of fascism in West Sussex. Specifically, we will be focusing on the British Union of Fascists (BUF), also known as the Blackshirts, and their summer camp of 1937 which saw thousands flock to…
West Sussex Record Office 