Exhibition opens Saturday, 19 November 2016, 2 pm

Picture
Please join us on Saturday, 19 November, at 2 pm, when we will be opening our neighbourhood history exhibition with a friendly and informal afternoon tea.
The exhibition brings together photographs, documents and memories about the changes that have taken place in the neighbourhood around the church within living memory. It's partly funded by our Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF) grant and forms part of our commitment to the HLF to increase people's understanding of the heritage of the church and its surrounding area. We've made some great friends along the way and we hope that the exhibition will go on fostering new friendships among the people living around the church - and perhaps even rekindle some old, forgotten ones.

When can I see it?
If you can't make it to the opening, the exhibition will be available to explore until March 2017 during our regular opening hours. 

It's not too late to take part!
For the exhibition we've been creating some big reminiscence scrapbooks, each focusing on a part of our neighbourhood's history within living memory (from about 1925 to 1985), including:
  1. St Mary's Church (and St James's and All Souls churches)
  2. St Mary's Primary School
  3. Life, buildings and transport around the neighbourhood 
  4. The Second World War in the neighbourhood
The scrapbooks have blank pages in them, so we can go on adding material! So bring along your memories and any old photos you'd like to share. We can copy the latter, so you don't have to leave anything precious with us.

St Mary's Primary School
We're very keen to welcome back past pupils and teachers of St Mary's Primary School, which was closed in 1977 and demolished in 1978 (along with Mount Street, St Mary's Church House, the old Rock Brewery and the Horse and Groom Inn). If you attended St Mary's or know someone who did, please tell them about the exhibition and invite them to the opening.

Exhibition spin-offs
In addition to the exhibition itself, we will eventually have a new guidebook and also incorporate some of the images into our website and our Facebook page on the history of St Mary's Primary School. We will be able to take the reminiscence books into community centres and sheltered housing units, and can add extra pages to the books if people give us new material to include.

Contact us
You can get in touch with us by email or else send us a letter with your contact details. Our postal address can be found here. You can also like our Facebook page on the primary school, St Mary's, Mount Street, Brighton, as we'll be posting a lot of our information about the exhibition there. 

In your email or letter please include any topics or details that mean a lot to you. We'd really appreciate it too if you could spread the word among friends and neighbours. The exhibition is not only about exploring past community but also about building a stronger one today. We want to bring people together to share old memories and, in the process, create new ones.

Back to The church
Back to Church history
Back to Home page
On to The windows
Picture
Sheila Stacey (nee Wickens) on her wedding day, May 1955 - married in All Souls and photographed in the garden outside St Mary's