NEWS RELEASES
A Year in the Making at Horsham Museum
5th November 2007
Gap year - that time spent between college and university where students explore the world, find themselves, hope to get a job, but end up needing more parental support than anticipated. Except in the case of Southwater student Charlotte Tobin, for she spent her gap year immersed in 340,000 words on Horsham’s history creating a masterpiece of order and organisation - an index.
To many an index is that bit on the end of the book that is forgotten till you need to consult it and then its importance becomes clear. Charlotte started with a blank page, 26 letters of the alphabet and hours and hours of dedication painfully reading through every word and has created no ordinary index but a highly detailed and thorough work that covers 30 pages with over 2,000 entries. The index comes in its own attractive card cover, ensuring you cannot mistake it for the telephone directory.
The index which runs from Abbey W H (the owner of Sedgwick park) to Zdrzalek Mr Morris (discoverer of the fossil dragonfly) via such names as Parochial Clothing Club has to be detailed because it is now the way in to the first major history of Horsham since Albery’s Millennium published in 1947.
In 2006 Horsham Museum published the first two volumes of a mammoth new history of the town, the most detailed ever written or published with thousands of new or scarcely known facts and information. It has taken Charlotte nearly a year to produce the index, so rich is the work she had to mine. The volumes written by the Curator in his spare time is based on nearly 20 years researching the town’s history with all proceeds, after covering printing costs, going to the museum's Purchase Fund.
It was intended to issue a combined index for the entire work but as volume three, covering the late 19th and 20th century, is revealing so much new information about the town and is taking longer to write, it was thought sensible to publish the index now. What is more the index is free. All those who have bought Volumes 1 and 2 can pick up their free copy of the index at the Museum, or send a large A4 stamped addressed envelope, with a large letter stamp and we will be happy to send it out.
So, for those who haven’t yet had chance, now is the time to buy the must-have Horsham Christmas present, Horsham’s History Volumes 1 and 2, as it now comes with a superb, easy to use index. The cost is £12.50 per volume or £22.50 for the two - now with the 30 page index. Those who have already bought both volumes can have a free Christmas gift from Horsham Museum and Charlotte Tobin.
Horsham Museum
9 Causeway, Horsham, West Sussex RH12 1HE
Tel: (01403) 254959 Fax:(01403) 282594
Email: museum@horsham.gov.uk
http://www.horshammuseum.org/