Celebrating our collections dating from 780AD to the present day
Manor Royal is a distinctive district of Crawley. It was earmarked early in the New Town's planning stage as the perfect area to contain the town's industrial pursuits. From its opening in the early 1950s, it has been home to factories, big and small, large warehouses, and offices. However, where once the district was a…
Continue reading ➞ Cataloguing Crawley New Town: An Industrial Haven
By Dr Sue Berry FSA, FRHistS - guest speaker Gravetye Manor, GM, the estate of William Robinson who made his money from writing about gardens, and shaped public taste. This talk is about the small country leisure house estates established in the Weald of Sussex between about 1840 - 1914 (during the reigns of Queen…
By Nichola Court, Archivist Extract from the anonymous Flapper's diary, noting her journey down to Chichester and various activities in the area (ref AM 75/1) Last week's blog explored the story behind an 'anonymous "flapper's" diary', bought by WSRO at auction in 2008 and later catalogued as AM 75/1. Thanks to the meticulous research carried…
Continue reading ➞ ‘Who’s that girl?’ The anonymous diary of a 1920s flapper (part 2)
Matthew Jones, Assistant County Archivist In May, a further series of Sussex archives were launched on Ancestry. Wills and other probate records from 1521 to 1858 were added with over 150,000 records for West Sussex, including over 12,000 probate inventories detailing the contents of houses, farms, pubs, trades and businesses across the county. Probate inventory…
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)
By Nichola Court, Archivist Shippams 4/1/2, detail from price list (c1965) Diary extract recording work carried out and weather conditions, October 1976 (catalogue reference Peter Bailey 3/1/2) On 10th June, Explore Your Archives will be celebrating business records. West Sussex Record Office holds the records of many of our county's businesses, from farms to estate…
Continue reading ➞ Brilliant business records: an update on the Shippam’s collection
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…
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