Chailey 1914-1918 tells the story of ordinary people flung together by extraordinary events.  It is the story about a village community during the First World War: Chailey, in what is now East Sussex. This website contains the biographies of over 500 Chailey men, sick and wounded First World War soldiers and Sussex 54 VAD nurses.

 

Nurse Edith Oliver, pictured below left, was not a native of Chailey but by the time the First World War started she was living in the village and was also an active member of Sussex 54 VAD.  The autograph album she kept during her time at Hickwells and Beechland House hospitals in Chailey and Newick, proved to be the starting point for my research.  I later extended this to include information on the men and women from Chailey Parish who served during the First World War. Chailey 1914-1918 is the result of that research and is still very much an on-going project.  This website is updated regularly as more information materialises.

 

The soldiers patients' entries in Nurse Oliver's album cover almost the entire 1914-1918 period: from Charles Sabourin of the 1st East Surrey Regiment, wounded at Mons on 23rd August 1914, to men wounded at Loos in 1915, the Somme in 1916, Passchendaele in 1917 and finally those wounded in the summer of 1918.