Celebrating our collections dating from 780AD to the present day
By Mia Curtis-Mays, Archives Assistant I am currently part of a digitisation project scanning the glass negatives from the Chichester Photographic Services collection (CPS). Through wanting to find out more about the collection I was working on, I discovered that the founder of Chichester Photographic Services has a legacy in the realms of film and…
Continue reading ➞ Harry Guermonprez: Founder of Chichester Photographic Services Ltd
By Louise Conway, Archives Assistant Part 1 of the Shoreham Bungalow Town blog introduced the area and it’s developments (read it here), this blog focuses on how this small area became, for a small time, ‘the Los Angeles of British productions’. Sunny South Film Company 1914 – 1915 The first film company in Shoreham was…
Continue reading ➞ Shoreham Bungalow Town – Part 2: Filmmaking
By Louise Conway, Archives Assistant In this first part of a two part blog series we will be exploring the history of Shoreham's Bungalow Town. To begin we will look at Shoreham pre Bungalow Town and the moving onto the early days of the site, the bungalows themselves and what life was like. This blog…
By Nick Corbo-Stewart, Archivist Travelling back to 1975 the United Kingdom had a very different feel, a population of just over 56 million people, coal fired power stations generating electricity, weekly cash salaries, white sliced bread, families with one car, three TV channels, Tom Baker as Dr Who, flares, Leeds United in the European Cup…
By Tim Hudson, guest speaker What is the largest building in Chichester after the cathedral? Most residents will know County Hall, tucked away behind West Street. A public right of way runs past it; and whenever a news item about the County Council appears in the press it is likely to be accompanied by a…
Continue reading ➞ Tuesday Talk – County Hall and its architect
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 Alice Millard, Archivist If you haven’t read part one of the Tommie and Betty Archive blogs, you can catch up here. Just as we used the archive to delve into the early lives of Tommie and Betty in part one, we are going to explore what the collection can tell us about the significant…
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…
West Sussex Record Office 