Welcome to the Ditchling History Project. We are a group of volunteers who research, record and share the history of Ditchling village, from its medieval beginnings to the people who shape it today. Our work includes talks and guided walks, exhibitions, an oral history archive and ongoing research into Ditchling families, houses and characters. Whether you grew up here, recently moved in, or are tracing an ancestor from afar, do explore the site, come along to a monthly drop-in session, or get in touch via our email, [email protected]

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“Evidence is always partial.  Facts are not truth, though they are part of it – information is not knowledge.  And history is not the past – it is the method we have evolved of organising our ignorance of the past.  It’s the record of what’s left on the record.  It’s the plan of the positions taken, when we to stop the dance to note them down.  It’s what’s left in the sieve when the centuries have run through it – a few stones, scraps of writing, scraps of cloth.  It is no more “the past” than a birth certificate is a birth, or a script is a performance, or a map is a journey.  It is the multiplication of the evidence of fallible and biased witnesses, combined with incomplete accounts of actions not fully understood by the people who performed them.  It’s no more than the best we can do, and often it falls short of that.”

Hilary Mantel