Place:Bishopstone, Sussex, England

source: Family History Library Catalog

the text in this section is based on an article in Wikipedia

Until 1934 Bishopstone in Sussex was a parish within Newhaven Rural District. It was previously part of the small Bishopstone Hundred and Pevensey Rape. Immediately prior to alterations, it had an area of 1,800 acres (728.4 hectares or 2.81 sq mi) and a population of 409 (1931 UK census).

The following description from John Marius Wilson's Imperial Gazetteer of England and Wales of 1870-72 is provided by the website A Vision of Britain Through Time (University of Portsmouth Department of Geography).

"BISHOPSTONE, a parish and a hundred in Lewes [registration] district, Sussex. The parish lies on the Newhaven railway, 9 miles SSE of Lewes; and has a post office under Lewes, and a [railway] station. Acres, 1,937: of which 108 are water. Real property: £1,995. Population: 322. Houses: 73. The property is divided among a few. The living is a vicarage in the diocese of Chichester. Value: £88. Patron: the Bishop of London. The church is Norman and early English; has a tower of four stages; was recently restored; and possesses high interest to artists and antiquaries. The Rev. J. Hurdis, author of the "Village Curate," was a native; and his monument is in the church.

"The hundred is in the rape of Pevensey; and consists of the parishes of Bishopstone and Denton. Acres: 2,945. Population: 528. Houses: 108.

In 1934 the parish was merged with its southeastern neighbour, East Blatchington, and the merged parishes became part of the Urban District of Seaford. Bishopstone now only refers to a village located along a dead-end road west of Seaford in East Sussex. A hamlet named Norton is also located along the same dead-end road. At the 2011 Census, the population of about 200 was included with that of Seaford.

Tide Mills was a derelict village within the parish located close to the English Channel about two kilometres (1.2 miles) southeast of Newhaven and four kilometres (2.5 miles) northwest of Seaford. Tide Mills was condemned as unfit for habitation in 1936 and abandoned in 1939.

Bishopstone was an episcopal manor, hence its name meaning "dwelling place of the bishop". The church, dedicated to Saint Andrew, is thought to date from the 8th century, and may well be the oldest in East Sussex. Bishopstone church has an ancient canonical sundial in its porch. The sundial is inscribed with the name Eadric, the King of Kent in 685. It was rebuilt in 1200.

Research Tips

• The East Sussex Record Office, The Keep, Woollards Way, Brighton, BN1 9BP, United Kingdom (email thekeep@eastsussex.gov.uk) holds material for the Archdeaconry of Lewes, present-day East Sussex, and therefore generally holds historical material for East Sussex parishes only. An on-line catalogue for some of the collections held by the East Sussex Record Office (ESRO) is available under the Access to Archives (A2A) project (a nationwide facility housed at The National Archives, Kew).
• The Institute of Heraldic and Genealogical Studies' Sussex Collection (PDF). This is a 9-page PDF naming the files relating to Sussex in their collection-a possible first step in a course of research.
• Further resources may be found on GENUKI's main page on Sussex.
• The National Library of Scotland has a website which provides maps taken from the Ordnance Survey England & Wales One-Inch to the Mile series of 1892-1908 as well as equivalent maps for Scotland itself. The immediate presentation is a "help" screen and a place selection screen prompting the entry of a location down to town, village or parish level. These screens can be removed by a click of the "X". The map is very clear and shows parish and county boundaries and many large buildings and estates that existed at the turn of the 20th century. Magnification can be adjusted and an "overlay feature" allows inspection of the area today along with that of 1900. The specific map from the series can be viewed as a whole ("View this map") and this allows the inspection of the map legend (found in the left hand bottom corner. Becoming familiar with the various facilities of these maps is well worth the trouble.
• GENUKI on Bishopstone
• A History of the County of Sussex provided by British History Online does not include articles on parishes that were part of Pevensey Rape.
• Maps of the local area are to be found on the WeRelate page for Pevensey Rape and on that for Newhaven Rural District.