Celebrating our collections dating from 780AD to the present day
Chosen by Matthew Jones, member of staff We can get a very personal insight into someone’s life by looking through their probate records, and inventories can be the most fascinating of all. We have over 12,000 probate inventories and one of them relates to Mary Cooper, a widow of Midhurst who ran a brewhouse in…
Continue reading ➞ Probate inventory for Mary Cooper of Midhurst, 1743 (Ep/I/29/138/235)
Lesley Sim, Information Services Manager, West Sussex County Council Eric Gill was a prolific artist: a sculptor, engraver, calligrapher, draughtsman and writer. Although he is often associated with the village of Ditchling in East Sussex, he had a strong connection to Chichester, moving here with his family in 1897; he lived at 2 North Walls…
Continue reading ➞ Eric Gill’s ‘London box’, c1940 (Eric Gill 353)
Chosen by Imogen Russell, member of staff Those tracing their family history within the Church of England will find that it is fairly straightforward, discovering baptisms, marriages and deaths in the parish registers held at the Record Office. However it is not always clear how you search for families who subscribed to a religion…
Continue reading ➞ Non-conformist records: Bosham Congregational Church Book (NC /C1/2/1)
Chosen by Richard Mant, researcher This is a copy in English of the entry for 12 March 1611 in the Court Book for the Manors of Woolavington, Wonworth and East Dean, dealing with the surrender of land by Edmund Maunt at the court baron in East Dean. The book covers the period 3 Oct 1597-28…
Chosen by James Gaffney, member of staff This is the original Master Plan for Crawley New Town, one of eight new ‘satellite’ towns created by the Government in the late 1940s on the outskirts of London. The aim of these new towns was to encourage people to relocate from an over-crowded capital, which had been…
Continue reading ➞ The Birth of Crawley; Master plan for Crawley New Town, 1947 (Par 60/26/4)
Chosen by Nichola Court, member of staff The 1601 Poor Law Act created a national system for managing the poor. It was superseded in 1834 by the New Poor Law, which compelled unions of parishes to build that most Victorian of institutions: the workhouse. In a bid to keep the poor rate to a minimum,…
Continue reading ➞ Plan of East Preston workhouse, 1872 (WG9/56/1/2 no.3)
Chosen by Martin Hayes, County Local Studies Librarian, West Sussex County Council Collected as oral history, the memories of those who have lived through fascinating times offer personal and individual first-hand experiences of events that provide us with a unique window into the past. This collection of interviews with veterans of WW1 is therefore of great significance,…
Chosen by Andy George, member of staff Police occurrence books were daily diaries containing a record of every official occurrence reported within the Division. The books contain reports of enquiries and observations made by the police whilst out on patrol; incidents attended by the police; attendance of person at a police station, and many notes.…
Continue reading ➞ Ballooning incident in Horsham Police Occurrence Book, 1891-1899 (Pol/W/H/1/1)
Chosen by Alison McCann, former member of staff Wednesday 20 July sees the 47th anniversary of the first manned mission to land on the moon. However, West Sussex Record Office has connections to lunar exploration centuries before Neil Armstrong took his famous steps, with a map drawn by a British astronomer in the seventeenth century.…
Continue reading ➞ 1610 Map of the Moon (PHA HMC 241/9 f.17)
Chosen by Diane Ladlow, member of staff This is a photograph by Walter Kevis who worked as a photographer in Petworth from c1877 to his retirement in 1908. I like this picture because it gives an insight into the immense amount of work that goes into servicing the needs of the family above stairs.…
West Sussex Record Office 