Celebrating our collections dating from 780AD to the present day
By Alice Millard, project archivist Behind the development of Crawley New Town was a phenomenal group of people. As well as the ten or so members of the executive committee, there were more than 100 employees across planning, estate, legal, administrative, financial and housing departments. These employees were some of the best architects, engineers, town…
Continue reading ➞ Cataloguing Crawley New Town: The Team Behind the Corp.
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)…
With May's Coronation on the horizon, a first for many in the country, it seems only fitting we look back through the years and see how the County celebrated the formal accession of King Charles' mother, Queen Elizabeth II, and his grandfather, King George VI. To help mark this occasion, West Sussex Record Office and…
Continue reading ➞ West Sussex Unwrapped IV: A County Celebrates – Coronations Past and Present
By Chris Olver, Project Archivist Until 2020, many people living in the United Kingdom had not experienced living through a pandemic. In a bid to understand Covid-19, many media outlets drew comparisons to the Great Influenza epidemic of 1918-1920, yet it was a pandemic from more recent history which showed how an emerging disease could…
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 Abigail Hartley, Searchroom Archivist The topics and contents of this blog contain antisemitic and xenophobic attitudes prevalent in 20th century Europe which are outdated, offensive, or discriminatory. This content has been included to authentically represent the original documents and the experiences of those involved and is not an endorsement of these views. On the…
Continue reading ➞ Holocaust Memorial Day – Ordinary People, Bulldogs Bank and the Dann Sisters
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 Bill Gage, Guest Speaker Add Mss 26499 - Poster for the opening of the Chichester and Midhurst Line, 1881 In the 1960s I would always listen to the Saturday morning radio programme “Childrens’ Favourites”. One song, featured regularly, was the “The Runaway Train went over the hill and she blew”. Yet I wonder how…
Continue reading ➞ Tuesday Talk: Rails to Midhurst – A tale of a Wild Iron Horse
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…
West Sussex Record Office 