Members' Area

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A new ARCHIVE button has appeared in the Member's Area. 

As part of our ongoing plan to digitise all of our paper records thousands of pages are being scanned by hand and files sorted. Once organised they will be available on our website for access. All of our scrapbooks  covering the period of  1960 -2012 have been digitised and now the long process of organising these files and uploading them to the website is under way. 

Watch this space for updates.

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​​Horsham Heritage Free Guided Walks

These have finished for the season and will restart in April 2025.

Watch out for details in the Spring for our Town Centre, Denne Road Cemetery and Horsham Park Free Guided Walks.

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National Planning Policy Framework​

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The Government are consulting on their proposed reforms to the Planning Policy. These proposals,  and Horsham Society's response, can be found on our Planning page

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​Council’s Draft Greenspace Strategy

The consultation on Horsham District Council’s draft Greenspace Strategy has now closed.

 

The Horsham Society welcomes the publication of the Strategy and supports its aims.

 

The Council owns and manages approximately 400 hectares of green space across the District, ranging from large formal parks to cemeteries and pockets of open space within housing estates.

Green spaces are important in towns to support public health and wellbeing, and as part of the townscape offsetting the hard landscaping associated with urban design.

 

This strategy is particularly important to Horsham town.  In other parts of the District many green spaces are owned and managed by Parish councils whereas in the unparished area of Horsham town similar ones are managed by HDC. Furthermore, we host a number of the larger sites such as Horsham Park, Warnham Nature Reserve, Chesworth Farm, Owlbeech and Leechpool Woods.

 

The draft Strategy sets out HDC’s vision and strategic priorities including the protection and enhancement of existing greenspaces, opportunities for leisure, maintenance arrangements and the use of volunteers.

 

The Society has responded to the consultation by suggesting that the vision statement is somewhat lacking in ambition in that currently it doesn’t aim to increase public use and enjoyment of its green spaces or to increase the overall number of green spaces. We have also made more detailed comments including the importance of the Riverside Walk and the need for the management plans for individual green spaces to be responsive to public expectations.

  

You can read the Council’s draft Strategy and our full response on our Planning page.

 

 

Proposed Local Heritage List for Horsham Town 2024

In conjunction with HDC, Horsham Society are proposing additional buildings and structures to be added to Horsham District Council's Local List.  See Publications for further information. Public consultation ended on 31st May 2024.

 

 

Horsham Town Trail

The new edition, guiding you to places of historical interest in and around the town. Now on sale from Horsham Museum.

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Horsham District Local Plan 2023 -2040

Read Horsham Society's response to HDC's consultation on our Planning page.

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Asset of Community Value

Our President, John Steele, has successfully re-registered The Capitol Theatre and Arts Centre as an Asset of Community Value. 

 

In addition to the Capitol, Horsham Society has now registered The Drill Hall & Music Studios and Rookwood. 

 

For more information read the article in the West Sussex County Times dated 18th January 2024. This can be found in the Member's area of the website.

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WEBSITE UPDATE 

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• Members can now download all of our out of print publications free of charge. Within the Members section is a Publications Download button. This gives members the opportunity of fully downloading any of our publications that are no longer on sale. These go back to 1980.  If the button does not work it is waiting for the appropriate booklet to be uploaded. To my knowledge the only missing book is the 2001 edition of the Children's Trail. Does anyone have a copy that I can borrow?

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• Members will find that the past copies of our Newsletter, going back to 1962, can now be read online. This section will be updated following the publication of each future issue. I am now missing three newsletter only: February 1980, July 1984 and February 1987. Please let me know if you have a copy.

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• The last twelve issues of the newsletter can be found under 'Current Newsletters'.

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• Within the Newsletter Archive is a new button 'Newsletter Indexes' These were completed by volunteers and cover the period of 1991 -2020.  An index for 1974 - 1984 has now been added. Hopefully members may find these of value.

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• Our fortnightly articles in the West Sussex  County Times are also available for members to read.  This archive goes back to January 2018.

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• We have purchased a new scanner which will enable us, with the help of volunteers, to digitise our paper archives. There are thousands of pages, which during the course of the year, will be added to our website giving an insight into the past.

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