Picturing the Past-Chichester
The cross has been bystander to the great moments in the city's history '“ and backdrop to its everyday existence, as these images held at Worthing Library amply show.
For our third Picturing The Past feature, we turn to Chichester '“ and you don't have to look for long before the cross starts to stand tall.
Advertisement
Hide AdAdvertisement
Hide AdA particularly arresting image sees it as the focal point of a different world. Drawn in 1861, it is depicted at the centre of a quieter world, pre-cars, pre-pedestrianisation.
Skip forward half a century and it is the cross that the Territorials symbolically stride away from as they leave for battle in a haunting photograph dating probably from the very start of the First World War.
You can almost hear the tramp of their feet as the soldiers march south towards the station, the first leg of their trip to the killing fields of France and Flanders.
For full feature and more pictures see West Sussex Gazette September 3