Tribute paid to expert on our town
Tributes have been paid to ‘immensely respected’ expert on Horsham, Dr Annabelle Hughes, who died on Saturday aged 79.
Jeremy Knight, Horsham museum and heritage manager, said due to sickness Annabelle had become a single mother with four children under 17, and decided to complete her Open University honours degree followed by a MA at Sussex University. Her MA thesis on Horsham Church Warden accounts from 16101640 fed into further research as she learnt to read old manuscripts.
“Her interest in old buildings was ignited by the campaign led by the Horsham Society to save Prewetts Mill from demolition,” Mr Knight said. “Since then she has been a stalwart of the Society leading many campaigns and conversations with Horsham District Council over how the town should care for its past.”
He said Annabelle was at the forefront of work on medieval carpentry, doing a PhD on timber framed buildings, taking an approach later emphasised by other academic publications.
“One reason she became so important in the mentoring of others in the field, including a number of Horsham District Council Listed building officers, is that she was hands on not just theoretical,” he said. “She physically explored all those bat dropping-infested crevices and cobweb-covered corners. Listening to her was like taking a masterclass in building techniques.”
Annabelle worked with Anthony Windrum on the first photographic book about the town, which Mr Knight said was a ‘publishing triumph’. In 1982 Bygone Horsham was published and four years later, Horsham Houses which told the history of the buildings and the people who lived in them. “It was the benchmark for Horsham, and for many other towns and villages who have replicated her approach. The recent history of Causeway House is built on its chapter in her book,” Mr Knight said.
Annabelle was involved with the town centre redevelopment, working with Horsham District Council to ensure the historic buildings were protected. She collaborated with John Buchanan on the publication Horsham: A Town Wakes Up, and was a frequent contributor to the Horsham Heritage journal, and the Horsham Society Newsletter, before publishing Horsham Houses Revisited in 2016 alongside an exhibition. Mr Knight said: “At the time we didn’t know it would be her last major work on Horsham, but in many respects it is an apt publication, her ‘love letter’ to the town that was her home, in a county that she adored.” He added: “Dr Annabelle Hughes was a force to be reckoned with. Generous in nature and particular with research, she was a seminal figure in Horsham’s heritage and will be greatly missed. As Cllr Jonathan Chowen, Deputy Leader and Cabinet Member for Leisure & Culture of Horsham District Council said on hearing of her sad passing, ‘A great loss to Horsham of an immensely respected expert on Horsham’s historic buildings’.”