Celebrating our collections dating from 780AD to the present day
By Louise Conway, Archives Assistant In this first part of a two part blog series we will be exploring the history of Shoreham's Bungalow Town. To begin we will look at Shoreham pre Bungalow Town and the moving onto the early days of the site, the bungalows themselves and what life was like. This blog…
By Nick Corbo-Stewart, Archivist Travelling back to 1975 the United Kingdom had a very different feel, a population of just over 56 million people, coal fired power stations generating electricity, weekly cash salaries, white sliced bread, families with one car, three TV channels, Tom Baker as Dr Who, flares, Leeds United in the European Cup…
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 Mia Curtis-Mays, Searchroom Assistant CPS 1485/5 - 1 Nov 1962 The beloved department store is something that is sorely missed in the current climate of high street shopping. In Chichester, West Street lost House of Fraser in recent years. This was, surprisingly, not the only department store St George’s House hosted. Before House of…
Continue reading ➞ J D Morant Ltd – West Street’s forgotten department store
By Alice Millard, Project Archivist After a year of cataloguing, the Crawley New Town archive is now available to the public at West Sussex Record Office. It is the first time these 3000+ records have been fully accessible, and researchers can search the catalogue online via our website. So, what's in the archive? The nucleus…
Continue reading ➞ Cataloguing Crawley New Town: The Catalogue is Live!
By Victoria Evans, Searchroom Archivist Sunset over Cavendish Street, taken by author Having moved to Chichester recently to take up the role of Searchroom Archivist at the West Sussex Record Office, I have been developing my different branches of research that our researchers utilise. Although doing such exercises enables me to provide a better service,…
Continue reading ➞ A Brief History of Cavendish Street – using maps
Each development corporation managing the building of a new town produced a master plan. This document, or documents, outlined the vision for the new town and went into detail about the provision for housing, amenities, shops, schools and leisure places. Accompanying the documents were a series of large scale planning maps which visualised aspects of…
Continue reading ➞ Cataloguing Crawley New Town: The Master Plan(s) and Planner(s)
PH 949 - Warnham Court, c1906 Big houses are expensive. Expensive to purchase, maintain, and even sell. Throughout the first half of the twentieth century, large country homes, built in the Victorian era or earlier and serving as countryside getaways for the rich and noble, were becoming increasingly difficult to maintain. Famous for its deer…
Continue reading ➞ West Sussex Unwrapped II: Month 4 – A Look at Warnham Court
By Abigail Hartley, Searchroom Archivist Maps are one of the most useful resources for family, local, and house historians. They can tell you about the age, changing shape and structure of properties, as well as shifting land usage and ownership. They are also worth looking at in more depth as records in of themselves. Moving…
Continue reading ➞ Mapping West Sussex – Part Two: County Orienteering and Plotting Estates
By Abigail Hartley, Searchroom Archivist Maps are one of the most useful resources for family, local, and house historians. They can tell you about the age, changing shape and structure of properties, as well as shifting land usage and ownership. They are also worth looking at in more depth as records in of themselves. Moving…
Continue reading ➞ Mapping West Sussex – Part One: Military Maps and Tithe Tiffs
West Sussex Record Office 