Celebrating our collections dating from 780AD to the present day
By Matthew Jones, Assistant County Archivist If you're someone who enjoys researching your family history, there is a huge amount of archive material available at West Sussex Record Office and it's not unusual for people to trace their roots back to the 1700s or earlier still. Boys at The Lancastrian School, Chichester, 1914 (WSRO E35/19/20)…
By Nichola Court, Archivist This International Women’s Day 2023, we celebrate the achievements of the Chichester-born suffrage campaigner, Ethel Margaret ‘Madge’ Turner, a woman who spent her adult life campaigning for equity and whose efforts to achieve this have recently been recognised in the city of her birth. The Market House (Butter Market) in North…
By Abigail Hartley, Searchroom Archivist West Sussex County Council Logo It’s hard to miss the numerous badges and arms of a blue shield with yellow birds dotted around West Sussex. You may be surprised to learn, however, that no English county had any arms officially granted to it until after the 1889 Local Government Act.…
Continue reading ➞ Sussex Coat of Arms: Martlets (not) in Flight
By Matthew Jones, Assistant County Archivist I'm delighted to say that the Record Office has launched a new programme of “coffee time” workshops for 2023, beginning in January with a session on how to start your family tree As with so many things, the workshops scheduled for 2020 were interrupted by the pandemic and we…
Continue reading ➞ Coffee Time? The Re-launch of workshops for family and local historians
By Caroline Walker, Guest Speaker This autumn the West Sussex Record Office is celebrating the life and work of Sussex-born artist MacDonald Gill. 'Max' - as he was known to friends and family - was an architect, mural painter, letterer, and graphic artist in the first half of the 20th Century, best known for his…
By Nick Corbo-Stewart, Volunteer Coordinator and Archivist Front cover of the EAHY photographic survey booklet The outbreak of Covid-19 and the introduction of lockdown in March 2020 saw a radical change to how staff at West Sussex Record Office (WSRO) worked. Normally based in the office full time, we moved to working from home. The…
By Abigail Hartley, Searchroom Archivist. It is often the most unexpected searches that lead one down a rabbit hole. In my recent search for a suitable image for Canada Day (i.e. the anniversary of Canadian Confederation on the 1st July 1867) I came across and – in a phrase – fell in love with two photograph albums which had recently been catalogued under PH 29950 and 29951. The albums cover a short period in the life of a naval pilot during the Second World War through photographs of his friends, his training, and his travels.
By Alice Millard, Research Assistant Please note that some of the language used in the original records includes offensive and insensitive terminology. The inclusion of these terms is not an endorsement of such language, but are there to authentically represent the original document. In August 2021, I began trawling through the transcripts of baptisms, marriages…
Continue reading ➞ The Boy in the Painting: Marcus Thomas, b.1768-d.1816
“A small agricultural and fishing hamlet of lesser importance than the neighbouring village of Broadwater” is how Worthing was best described pre-1800, or at least, according to the Victoria County History. No church, no market, and with land split across several different manors and lords, Worthing sometimes does not even feature on the County’s oldest…
Continue reading ➞ West Sussex Unwrapped III: Spring – Wishing You Were Here at Worthing!
By Abigail Hartley, Searchroom Archivist The easy answer to 'When was the first census held?' in the British Isles can be as simple an answer as 1801. Or 1841. Or 1086. Or Roman times if you really want to stretch the purpose and definition of a census. So, let's define a census. For our purposes,…
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