Celebrating our collections dating from 780AD to the present day
By Alice Millard, Project Archivist After a year of cataloguing, the Crawley New Town archive is now available to the public at West Sussex Record Office. It is the first time these 3000+ records have been fully accessible, and researchers can search the catalogue online via our website. So, what's in the archive? The nucleus…
Continue reading ➞ Cataloguing Crawley New Town: The Catalogue is Live!
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 Chris Olver, Project Archivist The 1st of December is World AIDS Day, the international day dedicated to raising awareness of the HIV/AIDS epidemic. This year marks the 36th World AIDS Day since it was launched by the World Health Organisation in 1988. To commemorate this year’s World AIDS Day, our Project Archivist, Chris Olver,…
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
By Nichola Court, Archivist Extract from the anonymous Flapper's diary, noting her journey down to Chichester and various activities in the area (ref AM 75/1) In 2008, WSRO purchased at auction an item listed as ‘a “flapper’s” social diary’ (catalogued as AM 75/1). Although the diary is short, covering barely three months, the auctioneers noted…
Continue reading ➞ ‘Who’s that girl?’ The anonymous diary of a 1920s flapper (part 1)
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