Celebrating our collections dating from 780AD to the present day
By Jennifer Mason, Assistant County Archivist (Collections Management) Acc 14373 - Guinea Pig Club Christmas Magazine, 1948: Drinks with McIndoe! ‘The entrance fee is something most men would not care to pay and the conditions of membership are arduous in the extreme’ These words from renowned plastic surgeon Sir Archibald McIndoe describe the famous Guinea…
PH 30788/112 - The Olympic Theatre in Chichester occupied what is now a warehouse on Northgate. Defining the first ‘film’ to be shown in West Sussex can be tricky. Nowadays, many of the earliest films put on display would be the equivalent of our modern-day computer gifs – short in length, no sound, and playing…
Continue reading ➞ West Sussex Unwrapped II: Month 8 – Sussex Cinemas
Sitting at the mouth of the river Adur in West Sussex, Shoreham is today a well known and established harbour but when the below article was written in 1872, the port had a long way to go to be the ‘Liverpool of the South’. The Brighton Gazette in 1872 Shipping records indicate that the port,…
Continue reading ➞ West Sussex Unwrapped II: Month 7 – Shoreham Harbour, The Liverpool of the South
What separates a fair from a market? The two terms can be used interchangeably. For the purposes of this blog, markets are a monthly, weekly, or in some larger cities a daily event, dealing in fresh produce from the local area. On the other hand, fairs are traditionally cyclical and annual and tended to target…
Continue reading ➞ West Sussex Unwrapped II: Month 6 – Ancient Fairs
By Kim Leslie (with an Introduction by Nichola Court) In his first blog, Kim Leslie introduced us to some of his more colourful ancestors, whose lives – at times, dramatic - are revealed in his family papers – The Corfield Papers. In his second blog, Kim focuses on his grandfather, Dr Carruthers Corfield, whose papers…
Continue reading ➞ THE CORFIELD PAPERS – A New Accession: Part Two
Today Crawley is a thriving town of over 110,000 people and is the largest inland town in West Sussex. However, what is now a bustling metropolis started life as the quiet rural villages of Crawley, Ifield, and Three Bridges. Read on to find out how and why this changed. Crawley on Film Queen Elizabeth II…
Continue reading ➞ West Sussex Unwrapped II Month 1: Crawley New Town
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 Kim Leslie (with an Introduction by Nichola Court, Archivist) One of the joys of working at a county record office such as WSRO is the wide variety of collections we hold and the individual documents that can be found within them. Collections of family papers can hold a surprising array of documents concerning a…
Continue reading ➞ THE CORFIELD PAPERS – A New Accession: Part One
By Jo McConville, Project Archivist "United States Capitol, Washington, D. C." by Boston Public Library is licensed under CC BY 2.0 The day finally arrives for Joe Biden’s inauguration as 46th president of the United States, following an extraordinary few months of controversy and division since his election victory in early November, culminating in the…
Continue reading ➞ Transatlantic Ties: January 2021 Update – Inaugurations, MPs and Presidents
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 