Celebrating our collections dating from 780AD to the present day
By Matthew Jones, Assistant County Archivist I was lucky enough to live in Midhurst for several years so I’m often drawn to old photographs of the town amongst the vast collections here at West Sussex Record Office. PH 6627 - Red Lion Street in 1944 with A A Holford (boot repairs), now Comestibles, and H…
By Mia Curtis-Mays, Archives Assistant CPS 1780/2 The beginning of the Corn Exchange The Corn Exchange in East Street, Chichester, was erected in 1832 to be a marketplace for local farmers, corn merchants and millers. Due to the lack of interest in the corn market by the corporation, farmers and corn merchants took matters into…
Continue reading ➞ Chichester’s Cinematic History at The Corn Exchange
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 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…
By Nick Corbo-Stewart, Archivist In 1999, a collection recording the administration of water supply in West Sussex was deposited at WSRO. Covering the years 1833 to 1979, the archive included the records of 23 organisations consisting of private companies, local government bodies and regional authorities. Catalogued by volunteers throughout 2024, these papers were given the…
By Victoria Evans, Searchroom Archivist With Spring just beginning, farms across the country will be abuzz with preparations for new life and new crops. Looking to just one collection that documents farm life, we will be delving into East Harting Farm (AM 1134) which was farmed by William Lory Hosking from 1930 to until his…
Continue reading ➞ Farm life during the month of March, 1951
By Jenny Bettger, Archives Assistant (Research) While producing research guides for Quaker and English Civil War records in the Record Office archive I came across the memories of Mary Pennington (MP 3899 and MP 1875), which refer to both the Siege of Arundel and her faith. Mary’s first husband Sir William Springett (or Springate) fought…
Continue reading ➞ The Siege of Arundel and The Springett Family
By Victoria Evans, Searchroom Archivist PH 15815 - A chilly wintery scene of the cathedral from Westgate fields, c. 1900 The usual images that come to mind when thinking of workhouses will resemble that of Oliver Twist, and rightly so. The conditions for those who relied upon the unions would have been implacable, degrading, and cruel…
By Victoria Evans, Searchroom Archivist With it being the month of ghosts and ghouls, we thought it only right to write a short piece about the famed British ghost hunter and physical researcher, Harry Price. Harry Price, c.1930, creator: David Jackson, ©University of London Born on the 17th of January 1881 in Red Lion Square,…
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