Place:Bosham, Sussex, England

source: Getty Thesaurus of Geographic Names

source: Family History Library Catalog

source: Family History Library Catalog

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

Bosham is a harbour village and civil parish in the Chichester District of West Sussex, England, centred about 2 miles (3.2 km) west of the city of Chichester, with its most densely populated area west of its central point. Its land forms a broad peninsula projecting into the natural Chichester Harbour while Bosham has its own harbour on an inlet to the west of the parish itself.

Bosham is the easternmost of the three parishes with their southern borders on Chichester Harbour. The southern edge of Chichester Harbour used to be in the ancient hundred of Manhood which forms a large peninsula between Chichester and the English Channel.

The parish has an area of 3,400 acres (1,400 hectares or 5.31sq mi). In the 2011 UK census its 2,900 people lived in 1,541 households. The borders of Bosham have been revised since 1974. Broadbridge and Old Fishbourne are hamlets within Bosham.

History

The site has been inhabited since Roman times, and is close to the famous palace at Fishbourne just outside Chichester. Several important Roman buildings have been found in northern Bosham around Broadbridge including a possible temple, a small theatre and a mosaic.

In 850, the original village church was built possibly on the site of a Roman building, and in the tenth century was replaced with Holy Trinity Church, situated beside Bosham Quay, that still serves as the local place of worship.

The Domesday Book (1086) lists Bosham as one of the wealthiest manors in England. It included the nearby village of Chidham. Bosham was confirmed to be in the possession of Osbern, Bishop of Exeter, who had been granted the land by his kinsman, Edward the Confessor. It possessed 112 hides in different parts of the country.

For more information, see the EN Wikipedia article Bosham#History. But neither Wikipedia nor British History Online cover much history beyond the Norman period.

Research Tips

• The West Sussex Record Office is located in Chichester. Because it holds the records of the Church of England Diocese of Chichester, which covers the whole of Sussex, it has church records relating to both parts of Sussex.
• An on-line catalogue for some of the collections held by the West Sussex Record Office is available under the Access to Archives (A2A) project (a nationwide facility housed at The National Archives, Kew).
• West Sussex Past - database of 2 million records from West Sussex heritage organizations.
• 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.
• 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 Bosham
• British History Online. A History of the County of Sussex: Volume 4, the Rape of Chichester, section on Bosham
• Maps of the local area are to be found on pages for Bosham Hundred and Chichester Rape.
• A further map taken from the Ordnance Survey England & Wales One-Inch to the Mile series of 1892-1908 provided online by the National Library of Scotland. This is very clear and shows many large buildings and estates existant at the turn of the 20th century. The link given centres in on Westhampnett, but it can be moved to fit many places in the immediate area.
• Inspecting a modern large-scale map such as provided in a British atlas or on Google Earth is recommended when studying this area.