West Sussex Record Office

What's on at the Record Office

3 Orchard Street, Chichester, PO19 1DD

Find out about events coming up at the Record Office.

Tell me more

We hold regular evening talks on Tuesdays and family history workshops on the first Wednesday of each month.


About our events

Talks on Tuesday

'Talks on Tuesday' cover a wide range of fascinating subjects presented by our experts. All talks start at 7.00pm and last 1 to 2 hours, including refreshments. 

For on-site talks, tickets cost £8.00 (non-refundable) per person and must be booked in advance from the Record Office. Online talks are either £5.00 per person or free of charge.

See below for our current scheduled talks and ticket prices.

Coffee Time Workshops

Do you want to research your family tree but don’t know where to start? Would you like to research the history of your house or learn how to read old handwriting? If so, sign up for our coffee time workshops.

On the first Wednesday of each month, our special mid-morning sessions, which usually run for 1-2 hours, will give you the opportunity to learn from the experts in a relaxed atmosphere.

We will introduce you to the incredible range of archive material available at the Record Office - dating from 780 AD to the present day - and how best to use the sources for research.

At West Sussex Record Office you can be assured of a warm welcome from our friendly and knowledgeable staff. We hope you will join us, whether it's for one session or all of them!

See below for our current scheduled workshops.

Special events

Open Day at West Sussex Record Office, Saturday 25 November 2023

To celebrate the 50th birthday of our friends' group, the West Sussex Archives Society, a special open day will be held from 10.00am to 3.30pm.

Come along and enjoy a range of activities:

  • Tours of the Record Office: See behind the scenes, including a strong room and the conservation studio (tours at 10.30am, 11.30am and 2.30pm. Limited places; booking essential on 01243 753602).
  • Display of original archives, including our oldest document dated 780 AD, and items purchased with help from the West Sussex Archives Society.
  • Old cine films of West Sussex from the collections of Screen Archive South East, will be running all day on a big screen.
  • Royal Sussex Regiment Museum: Display of original objects from the museum collections.
  • Sussex Family History Group: Advice desk staffed by experts from our local family history society.
  • Family and local history research: Staff will be on hand to advise on resources available at the Record Office to trace your family tree, study the history of your local area, or discover the history of your house.
  • Special archives projects: Stalls with information on recent projects to catalogue the archives of Crawley New Town and survey archives of the HIV/Aids epidemic in England and Wales.
  • West Sussex Archives Society: Members will be on hand to answer your questions about the Society and, if you'd like to join, sign you up for membership.

Free entry; refreshments available.


Talks on Tuesday

The Women’s Land Army - a Sussex connection

Ian Everest's mother was one of the 80,000 Land Girls during WW2 and his talk includes some of her personal memories and a potted history of the role of women on farms during the two world wars. Vital to this was Lady Gertrude Denman and her Balcombe Place home in West Sussex.

Venue: West Sussex Record Office, 3 Orchard Street, Chichester, PO19 1DD
Date: Tuesday 31 October 2023
Time: 7.00pm
Tickets: £8.00 including refreshments, £7.00 for West Sussex Archives Society members.
Booking: Please phone 01243 753602 to book and pay by debit/credit card.

Chichester in colour 1973

Local historian Alan Green journeys back to Chichester and its buildings, exactly half a century ago.

The talk will last up to an hour, with an opportunity to ask questions (via the chat box for our remote audience).

Venue: West Sussex Record Office, 3 Orchard Street, Chichester, PO19 1DD
Date: Tuesday 28 November 2023
Time: 7.00pm
Tickets: £8.00 (attending in-person), £7.00 for West Sussex Archives Society members, £5.00 (attending remotely via Zoom).
Booking: To attend in person, please phone 01243 753602 to book and pay.

To attend online, please book via Eventbrite:

Ford Madox Ford in West Sussex: Finding a ‘rhomboid of green’

The modernist writer who became a Sussex smallholder and reached for new ways of writing about place.

In the first spring after the Great War, Ford moved to a derelict cottage between Pulborough and Storrington, cleaned the well, planted an ambitious garden, waited for his partner Stella Bowen to arrive and tried to work out what kind of writer he was now. He did not feel the same as the man who had published The Good Soldier in 1915.

Wanting to understand what the war had done to his sense of landscape and to his passion for rural life, he summoned fragmentary memories and studied them from the perspective of his new Sussex home.

This talk by Professor Alexandra Harris will follow Ford and Bowen as they move from ‘Red Ford’ to a larger smallholding on Bedham Hill, asking what interested them, what they knew of local history, how Ford wrote and re-wrote these places, and how why they went from a ‘nook’ to a view that seemed to show them ‘the kingdoms of the earth’.

In the last part of the talk, Alexandra will outline the larger project of which this forms a part. She’ll suggest echoes across time, connecting the people she has studied in the Arun area, and she’ll raise questions about the problems and possibilities that emerge at the meeting-points of literary and local history.

The talk will last up to an hour, with an opportunity to ask questions (via the chat box for our remote audience).

Venue: West Sussex Record Office, 3 Orchard Street, Chichester, PO19 1DD
Date: Tuesday 30 January 2024
Time: 7.00pm
Tickets: £8.00 (attending in-person), £7.00 for West Sussex Archives Society members, £5.00 (attending remotely via Zoom).
Booking: To attend in person, please phone 01243 753602 to book and pay. To attend online, please book via Eventbrite.

 

Recovering Britain’s Amateur Theatrical Past 1789-1914: a West Sussex perspective

Amateur theatre is everywhere. Since the mid-nineteenth century, amateur theatrical productions have far outnumbered those mounted by their professional counterparts. Yet amateur theatre’s rich history and its significance to social, cultural, political and economic histories has been almost entirely overlooked.

In this talk, Dr David Coates will take you on a whistle-stop tour of Britain’s amateur theatre histories, from the French Revolution through to World War 1. On this tour you’ll encounter amateur performances in all sorts of spaces and places - from large venues in the centre of cities and towns, to intimate rooms in remote village halls and country houses.

You’ll discover theatricals on the decks of naval ships in the middle of the ocean and in army encampments at home and around the Empire. You’ll also hear about Queen Victoria’s passion for private theatricals, Jane Austen’s fictional theatricals in Mansfield Park and Charles Dickens’s amateur dramatic talents.

Most importantly, you’ll see how materials in the collections of the West Sussex Record Office are helping to piece together a narrative for the development of amateur theatre in Britain between 1789 and 1914.

The talk will last up to an hour, with an opportunity to ask questions (via the chat box for our remote audience).

Venue: West Sussex Record Office, 3 Orchard Street, Chichester, PO19 1DD
Date: Tuesday 27 February 2024
Time: 7.00pm
Tickets: £8.00 (attending in-person), £7.00 for West Sussex Archives Society members, £5.00 (attending remotely via Zoom)
Booking: To attend in person, please phone 01243 753602 to book and pay. To attend online, please book via Eventbrite.

What did the Victorians do for Chichester?

Visually Chichester did not alter substantially under the Victorians so its character remained – and remains to this day - essentially Georgian.

In this illustrated talk Alan Green explores the Victorian era in Chichester including the coming of the railway, new buildings and the provision of the cattle market, as well as significant happenings such as the collapse of the cathedral spire in 1861 and the sorry saga of why, despite regular cholera outbreaks, a sewerage system was not to be installed until 1892.

Along the way the movers and shakers of the day will be met.

The talk will last up to an hour, with an opportunity to ask questions (via the chat box for our remote audience).

Venue: West Sussex Record Office, 3 Orchard Street, Chichester, PO19 1DD
Date: Tuesday 30 April 2024
Time: 7.00pm
Tickets: £8.00 (attending in-person), £7.00 for West Sussex Archives Society members, £5.00 (attending remotely via Zoom).
Booking: To attend in person, please phone 01243 753602 to book and pay. To attend online, please book via Eventbrite.


Coffee time workshops

Discovering wills and other probate records

Date: Wednesday 4 October 2023

Time: 10.00am

Tickets: £7.50 (non-refundable) -  book in advance by contacting the Record Office.

Researching the history of your house

Date: Wednesday 1 November 2023

Time: 10.00am

Tickets: £7.50 (non-refundable) - book in advance by contacting the Record Office.


Record Office friends

A regular programme of events is also organised by the West Sussex Archives Society. For more information, visit their website.

Contact details

  • Email record.office@westsussex.gov.uk
  • Tel: 01243 753602
  • Address

    3 Orchard Street, Chichester, PO19 1DD
  • Additional information

    Our address for correspondence is: County Archivist, West Sussex Record Office, County Hall, Chichester, PO19 1RN

Find us

By car

We are based in the heart of Chichester, very near to County Hall. The A27 trunk road runs through Chichester for links to Brighton and Portsmouth, while links to London are provided by the A23 and A24. Chichester is approached from the north via the A286 from Midhurst; and the A285 from Petworth.

By train

We are about a 10 minute walk from Chichester train station, which is served by a regular train service from London Victoria. There are also services from Brighton and Portsmouth.

By bus

The closest bus stops are at Orchard Street, West Street (Cathedral) and Avenue de Chartres.