Celebrating our collections dating from 780AD to the present day
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 Katherine Slay, Archive Assistant The biggest collection of black and white railway photographs held at the Record Office is now available to search via our online catalogue. Bill Sumner was a very keen photographer, taking thousands of images, all of which came to the Record Office in 2009. William George 'Bill' Sumner was born…
By Bill Gage, Guest Speaker My first recollections of Bognor Station go back to the mid 1950s, when my family would travel down by train from Essex for holidays. As our electric train approached the station I would hope to see a steam locomotive on the local goods train, waiting in the sidings. Once on…
Continue reading ➞ Tuesday Talk: The Bognor Branch – 160 years of railways in Bognor
By Jenny Bettger, Research Assistant When researching genealogy, you often come across individuals or family groups that stand out. This was the case for me with the Glue family, who I discovered when I was looking at families with longstanding links to the Rogate area. The Glues, or Clues, as they were also known, were…
Back on the 29th of June a group of colleagues from the Record Office took a social trip to Standen House. This particular trip stemmed from two of us having a deep appreciation of William Morris and the Arts and Crafts movement. We do also plan in the future to visit more historic sites that…
Continue reading ➞ The County Archive Squad visit Standen House
By Nick Corbo-Stewart, Archivist and Volunteer Coordinator The volunteers at West Sussex Record Office (WSRO) work with a wide variety of collections. They sort, list, order, catalogue and package. Once ready, these are opened for use to our researchers. Within this, the first of a series of blogs, I will introduce you, the reader, to…
By Victoria Evans, Searchroom Archivist The joy of a holiday is a longstanding staple of British summertime. That feeling of the anticipation as the holiday grows closer and closer. And being to put aside any troubles for just a week or two allows for a moment to switch off your mind from the everyday routine…
By Mia Curtis-Mays, Searchroom Assistant Nestled in the forest, on the borderline of West Sussex and a stone’s throw from Hampshire, Stansted House proudly stands in Stansted Park Estate. In SP 1256, the mansion was described as being substantially built of a grey stock brick, stone quoins, and ashleering borders. It boasted 16 Tuscan columns…
By Matthew Jones, Assistant County Archivist Residents of towns and villages along the south coast of England would have been only too aware of the huge build-up of military personnel, vehicles and equipment as the preparations for D-Day gathered pace in early 1944. Bognor Regis: airborne assault glider being towed by an aircraft, 6 June…
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…
Continue reading ➞ Cataloguing Crawley New Town: The New Town Blues
West Sussex Record Office 