Celebrating our collections dating from 780AD to the present day
By Carina Rosas, Senior Conservator Within the church court records of the Chichester Diocese, a series labelled as miscellaneous court papers, dated 1550’s to 1850’s, was suspected to contain a wealth of information on day-to-day life in West Sussex. It had suffered some damage in the past and the vulnerability of many documents meant cataloguing…
Continue reading ➞ Conservation of the Miscellaneous Court Papers
By Victoria Evans, Searchroom Archivist, in collaboration with Jennifer Mason, Senior Archivist (Collections Manager), and Linda and Catherine, WSRO cataloguing volunteers Within our Episcopal Records, the miscellaneous court papers (MCPs) are a set of documents that have remained largely unknown to us, as they have been in too poor a condition to enable them to…
Continue reading ➞ Cataloguing the Miscellaneous Court Papers
In 2017 the Sussex Record Society published a fascinating volume of church court proceedings taken from the Diocesan Archives held at the Record Office. Depositions, which can be found in the Ep/I/11 series, are the accounts of cases held at the Bishop of Chichester’s Consistory Court. These courts covered a plethora of local issues and disputes including quarrels over wills, tithe disputes, matrimonial disagreements, and the ever amusing defamation cases. However they can be difficult to read and interpret for the modern reader, which is where the Sussex Record Society and Peter Wilkinson got involved.