This project has been running at Crawley Museum for the last year. The aim of the project is to open up the Museum’s archives through behind-the-scenes tours, touring exhibitions and supporting individuals to research their own local history projects. Local volunteer, Mike Fox, has written about his project in progress, and we look forward to seeing the final version of his research, in the meantime here’s a taste of things to come.
History Unboxed is funded by Arts Council England.
47 Albany Road, West Green, Crawley – An Idea for a Project
Mike Fox researching at the museum.
The idea (or ideas!) for this project came about while I was volunteering on other projects at Crawley Museum as well as curating my own exhibition on Crawley Town Football Club with a friend (our second such exhibition).
Access to the museum archive opened my eyes to some of the resources available to me in the way of photos, maps and even life stories for my hometown of Crawley.
At the same time, I was visiting my Auntie Mary, the older sister and only surviving sibling of my dad, John Fox, as she came towards the end of her life having celebrated her 100th birthday. Along with her siblings and many of their descendants, Mary was a lifelong Crawley resident. The house where she and her brothers were born in the 1920s was built by their father and grandfather in the early 1900s and is still in family ownership.
The seed was planted to celebrate Mary’s life alongside that of her original family home, 47 Albany Road, in the style of the TV programme A House Through Time.
I then realised that with my access to the museum archive, I could tie in key stages in the development of Crawley as a town to broaden the appeal of the project. Following on from this I had another idea: to give a more global sense of time and place to our West Green story by weaving in key world events from the twentieth century, in particular the two world wars and their impact both on my family and the town as a whole. Later came the development of Crawley New Town and its impact on my family.
Over the last few years I have become one of our family’s “historians” and keeper of family photos and ephemera, as well as collecting local history items, some of which I realised I could also use to build the project.
Initially the thought was to make the project a small portable exhibition on between five to eight display boards. There was also the possibility of turning it into an online exhibition.
Work in progress.
I initially did a mock-up of the first page using CANVA. The content of this page introduced the family and the start of their journey from South London down to Reigate in the 1890s, with their arrival in Crawley (Three Bridges, initially) around the turn of the century.
Due to other commitments, progress stalled on the project for some months, but now that I am ready to devote more time to it, I need to decide on the format for the project and recommence telling the story of the Fox family of 47 Albany Road, West Green, against a background of local and world events.
Mike Fox
May 2026
