Builder Paul Gettins got a surprise this week, when he accidentally uncovered a West Sussex County Times page from January 15, 1898.
Paul came across the fragment while working in the roof space of a house he was renovating in Rushams Road.
“It dropped down on top of me,” he said. “There’s one part readable, about a bloke sleeping in a barn shed.”
The paper says that the man was sentenced to one day in prison after he admitted sleeping in a cow shed near Warnham, scaring away the farmer’s cows.
Paul said: “It was a bit of a shock. Doing what I do, you do find old newspapers, but not normally one that’s that old, or that parts of it are still readable.”