Celebrating birth and passing of a Horsham legend

This week marks both the birth, in 1819, and death, in 1888, of one of Horsham’s most celebrated residents – Thomas Honywood.

Some of his achievements in his lifetime include:

• He set up the town’s volunteer fire brigade which served Horsham until 1911.
• He was an early photographer, producing an album of prints dating from 1851.
• Honywood invented a photo-chemical printing technique which transferred images of natural objects onto various surfaces which he exhibited in 1885 at The International Inventions Exhibition in London.
• He was an amateur artist and made detailed sketches of Horsham’s County Gaol before its demolition in 1845.
• He had an interest in archaeology, arranging digs in Sussex. He discovered the ‘Horsham Hoard’ of medieval pottery in West Street.

Honywood had his own mini museum collection at his house which was eventually sold off a year before he died.

It included a massive collection of coins, cases of stuffed English and foreign birds, plus various valuable paintings.

Thomas Honywood, born October 7 1819, died October 5 1888.