Celebrating our collections dating from 780AD to the present day
Matthew Jones, Assistant County Archivist In May, a further series of Sussex archives were launched on Ancestry. Wills and other probate records from 1521 to 1858 were added with over 150,000 records for West Sussex, including over 12,000 probate inventories detailing the contents of houses, farms, pubs, trades and businesses across the county. Probate inventory…
Each development corporation managing the building of a new town produced a master plan. This document, or documents, outlined the vision for the new town and went into detail about the provision for housing, amenities, shops, schools and leisure places. Accompanying the documents were a series of large scale planning maps which visualised aspects of…
Continue reading ➞ Cataloguing Crawley New Town: The Master Plan(s) and Planner(s)
By Nichola Court, Archivist Shippams 4/1/2, detail from price list (c1965) Diary extract recording work carried out and weather conditions, October 1976 (catalogue reference Peter Bailey 3/1/2) On 10th June, Explore Your Archives will be celebrating business records. West Sussex Record Office holds the records of many of our county's businesses, from farms to estate…
Continue reading ➞ Brilliant business records: an update on the Shippam’s collection
By Nick Corbo-Stewart, Volunteer Co-ordinator and Archivist Volunteers hard at work in the Record Office searchroom This week is National Volunteers' Week and we're taking this opportunity to celebrate the contribution volunteers from the local community make; their hard work has a hugely positive impact on the services the Record Office provides to its researchers.…
Continue reading ➞ National Volunteers’ Week 2023: Volunteers at West Sussex Record Office
By Alice Millard, project archivist Behind the development of Crawley New Town was a phenomenal group of people. As well as the ten or so members of the executive committee, there were more than 100 employees across planning, estate, legal, administrative, financial and housing departments. These employees were some of the best architects, engineers, town…
Continue reading ➞ Cataloguing Crawley New Town: The Team Behind the Corp.
By Alice Millard, Research Assistant During our survey of parish registers for entries relating to people of African, Afro-Caribbean, and Indian heritage*, we found the baptism of a teenaged boy called George Diamond Yacoodh in New Shoreham, 1869. George's baptism entry notes that he was a "native of Zanzibar", but was living at St Saviour's…
Continue reading ➞ Stories from the Parish Registers: George Diamond Yacoodh
By Jennifer Mason, Assistant County Archivist (Collections Management) Anyone who lives and works in West Sussex is likely to be well aware of what an important role agriculture has played in the history of the county. At WSRO we have photographs, farm diaries, account books, and maps all of which record agricultural activity through the…
Continue reading ➞ All Creatures Great and Small: the story of a Chichester veterinarian
By Alice Millard, Research Assistant Puglism, n. The art, sport, or practice of fighting with fists; boxing. In the few years that I have been working at West Sussex Record Office, I have stumbled across several 19th century documents relating to pugilistic pursuits in the county. I had wrongly assumed prize fights were the domain…
Continue reading ➞ A Pugilist’s Paradise: Prize Fighting in 19th Century West Sussex
After almost three years, our Transatlantic Ties project came to a joyful conclusion on Saturday 11th June with a symposium at the University of Chichester. With all the challenges of the last few years, we were delighted to be able to hold the event as originally intended, and the appearance of our often elusive British…
Continue reading ➞ A celebratory end to the Transatlantic Ties project!
Chichester Festival Theatre, 1959-1962 Sixty years ago, in 1962, Chichester's brand new Festival Theatre opened. Looking rather like a mid-century spaceship, the theatre had come into existence so quickly it may have indeed appeared out of thin air. It was the brainchild of optician Leslie Evershed-Martin, who, in just two years, had planned, funded, built,…
Continue reading ➞ West Sussex Unwrapped III: Summer – Chichester Festival Theatre, 1959-1962