Chichester Local History Society
A generation which ignores history has no past and no future
For the summer visit on July 10, members of the Chichester Local History Society enjoyed a tour of the new reception area nearing completion at the Planetarium and were then given a tour of the starlit sky from the North to the South Pole by Dr John Mason. The expansion and improvement to the Sir…
Introduction I’m pleased to bring to your attention a fascinating data set just published by the Sussex Records Society. The Society was founded in 1901 ‘with the aim of publishing historical records of the county found in the great national libraries (such as the British Library and the Public Record Office [National Archives at Kew])…
Read More “Tudor and Stuart Wills of Chichester 1485-1688” »
Would you like to read an engaging, informative well-written account of Sussex and Chichester? If so, I strongly recommend The Rising Down (2024), by Professor Alexandra Harris – possibly the most significant contribution to the history of Sussex in the past decade, even this century. The geographical span of the book, centred on the Arun…
On 11 May 1944 the Liberator bomber, registration 41-29481 – one of 36 Liberators – took off from Lavenham airbase in Suffolk for operations on marshalling yards and other strategic targets in central Europe. The plane was hit by anti-aircraft fire South of Chartres and had to abandon the mission. It had been very badly…
Read More “The Death of a Young Girl remembered 11 May 2024” »
We have received a request from the Centre to complete a survey and we thought it would be helpful to share this with you. The Centre are replacing the roof of the school building and those that fund the Centre need to know about the various people that use it so that New Park can…
It is with regret we have to announce the death on 22 April, at age 91, of Ken Green, one of – or more precisely the – founder of our Society. Ken was a proud Cicestrian, being born in this fair city in April 1932 and receiving the classic education for a Chichester boy –…
By Bob Wiggins During Richard Child’s excellent talk on 15 April about the intertwined histories of the Freeland, Raper & Tyacke families, there were occasional references to the state of sanitation in our City. This made me recall the meeting of ‘The Drainage Party’ which took place in the Unicorn Inn on September 11, 1889…
by Bob Wiggins The Bull Inn located at 4-5 Market Road was a Free house that closed in 2015. In mid-2023 work started on gutting the interior. The latest photo of the repainted exterior was taken in March 2024 when it displayed a ‘To Let’ notice -‘All classes and uses considered’. Snapshots of past Publicans…
by Alan H J Green I have made another interesting find on eBay, this time a sepia postcard which was described by the vendor as being of 18 North Street Chichester, a tobacconist’s shop. I did not recognise the building, but a quick check of my 1933 Kelly’s confirmed that it was what it claimed to…
The Chairman’s Occasional Blog The news that Donald Campbell’s Bluebird K7 has been restored, with the hope that it may run again on Coniston Water, has a link to Chichester, albeit tenuous. Donald’s father, Sir Malcolm Cambell, first broke the land-speed record for a car on Pendine Sands, near Tenby in South Wales in September…