Place:Danehill, Sussex, England

source: Family History Library Catalog

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

Danehill (also known as Dane Hill) is a village and civil parish in the Wealden District of East Sussex, England. The village is located on the border with West Sussex, five miles (8 km) northeast of Haywards Heath, and on the edge of the Ashdown Forest. The parish was only established in 1898. Other places now within the parish include the village of Chelwood Gate and the hamlets of Furner's Green and Twyford (Danehill). Prior to 1900 Chelwood Gate and Twyford were probably part of Maresfield parish and Furner's Green was in Fletching. These smaller places have been redirected accordingly.

The Prime Meridian passes through the middle of Danehill.

The 2007 estimated population for the parish was 1,927; this had increased to 1,957 by the time of the 2011 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).

"DANEHILL, a village, a chapelry, and a hundred in Sussex. The village stands 4½ miles S of East Grinstead [railway] station, and 6¼ NE of Cuckfield; and has a post office‡ under Uckfield, and a fair on 25th July. The chapelry is in Fletching and Horsted-Keynes parishes; and was constituted in 1851. Population: 963. Houses: 199. The living is a vicarage in the diocese of Chichester. Value: £90. Patron: the Earl of Sheffield. The hundred is in Pevensey rape; hears the name of Danehill-Horsted; and contains three parishes. Acres: 6,832. Population: 1, 181. Houses: 195."

As can be seen from the quotation above, Danehill was not an ecclesiastical parish but was divided between those for Fletching and Horsted Keynes. When the civil parish was established in 1898, 216 of the households had been in Fletching and 24 in Horsted Keynes.

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

The first written evidence of the village comes from 1265 and the first permanent houses from 1400. By 1660 the Red Round Inn became a stopping point for travellers between London and Lewes, Sussex. After travellers continued to use Danehill's roads, the village decided to improve the roads which led to wealthy families moving into the area, such as John Baker Holroyd (1735–1821) who moved into the estate of Sheffield Park in 1769 and was later to become the First Lord Sheffield.

Research Tips

• Information on Danehill prior to 1900 (including 19th century censuses) will be found under the parishes of Fletching and Horsted Keynes.
• 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 Fletching and GENUKI on Horsted Keynes
• Maps of the local area are to be found on the WeRelate page for Lewes Rape and on that for Chailey 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.