Archaeological Finds from Across Sussex Mapped by Brighton Museum

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This bound volume of Ordnance Survey maps has been in Brighton Museum’s collections since about 1914.

It was actively used by Herbert Samuel Toms, a curator at Brighton Museum & Art Gallery from 1897 to his retirement in 1939 and a founding member of Brighton & Hove Archaeological Club (Society from 1935). It’s evident that his successors also made additions to the maps up until the 1980s. This valuable reference material has recently been catalogued and digitised in full to enable online access.

The annotations reference many finds in the museum’s collections, including the two Neolithic flint axes noted on the Newtimber map. Since January 2019 these have been on display in the Elaine Evans Archaeology Gallery at Brighton Museum.

Further maps deposited by the Brighton & Hove Archaeological Society and its members will be catalogued in the coming months. This rich collection also includes drawings and plans of archaeological sites in Sussex surveyed by Toms, his wife Christine, and other members of the Society that will be catalogued, digitised and published online during 2020.