Place:East Blatchington, Sussex, England

source: Family History Library Catalog

East Blatchington is a coastal village in East Sussex to the west of the town of Seaford. It was merged into the urban district of Seaford when it was formed in 1894. In 1934 its neighbouring parish to the west, Bishopstone, was merged into the parish of East Blatchington.

Like Seaford and Newhaven, its western neighbour, East Blatchington was a front line coastal defence during the Napoleonic war, and had a military barracks built in 1794 and demolished after the Great War.

St Peter's Parish Church dates back to about 1100 and the church registers date from 1563.

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 East Blatchington
• Maps of the local area are to be found on the WeRelate page for Pevensey Rape and on that for Hailsham Rural District or Eastbourne Rural District.
• A History of the County of Sussex provided by British History Online does not include articles on parishes that were part of Pevensey Rape.