Selling the dream: Churchman & Duke

Cataloguing sales particulars for a New Town By Nick Corbo-Stewart, Archivist and Volunteer Coordinator Post-war re-development of Crawley led to a large scale planned expansion of the town, creating areas for industry, retail, and urban living.  Classified by the government as a ‘New Town’ and overseen by the Crawley Development Corporation (CDC), this was one of…

The Rolling Stones’ Redlands Drugs Bust

By Victoria Evans, Searchroom Archivist The Rolling Stones in April 1967 (cropped from original) With the upcoming release of ‘Redlands’ at Chichester Festival Theatre (running 20th September to 18th October), we wanted to take this chance to delve deeper into the true story behind the stage adaptation. Looking to the records we hold at the…

Cataloguing Crawley New Town: The New Town Blues

By Alice Millard, New Jerusalems Project Archivist Please be aware that this blog post discusses mental health issues and drug use. No, the 'New Town Blues' were not a football club, but rather the name given by the British press and several 20th century sociologists to a perceived phenomenon occurring in the country's new towns…

West Sussex Unwrapped III: Summer – Chichester Festival Theatre, 1959-1962

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,…