The Wicked Trade: smugglers of Arundel and West Sussex, Wednesday 8th October

During the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, smuggling was endemic in Sussex; not just along the coast, but also further inland, where most of the contraband was stored. Arundel, being a port, and only a few miles from isolated beaches, popular with smugglers, such as Climping, was an ideal centre for the smuggling trade. The story of smuggling is one of desperate times leading to desperate measures, and the reality was far away from the imagined fantasy of recent years.

Stand and Deliver! A History of Highwaymen, including Jack Upperton, the Burpham Highwayman. Wednesday 15th October
Robbery on the King's highway goes back to the earliest times, but the emergence of gangs of highway robbers or of the individual highwayman dates back to the seventeenth century and the aftermath of the Civil War. Highway robbery reached its height in the following century, with some highwaymen becoming celebrities. This talk will also include some Sussex highwaymen, including Burpham's own Jack Upperton, whose criminal deeds and still remembered in local folklore today.

Charms, Cures, and Potions: keeping well in Old Sussex, Wednesday 22nd October.
In an era when most people could not afford to go the doctor, and when the skills of doctors and the potency of their medicines were very limited, most people relied on folk cures and remedies. There were not only physical illnesses to contend with, many people believed in the malign presence of witchcraft and there were rituals and charms for dealing with this threat too. Some of these 'old wives tales' probably did some good, others none at all, and some probably did more harm than good.

All change! How the coming on the railway transformed Sussex forever: seaside resorts, market gardening, tourism, and the dream of a rural idyll, Wednesday 29th October.
Hard as it is to believe today, before the coming of the railway to Sussex in the 1840s, this county was underpopulated and poor. By the 1850s, the railway was transforming the fortunes of Sussex, employment opportunities were increasing, and with the new jobs came higher wages. A Sussex man or woman of 1900 had very different and improved expectations of their forebears of 1800; and it was the railway that delivered the change.