Place:West Grinstead, Sussex, England

source: Family History Library Catalog

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

West Grinstead is a village and civil parish in the Horsham District of West Sussex, England. It lies just off the B2135 road four miles (6.3 km) northwest from Henfield. It is within the ancient division of the Rape of Bramber. The western branch of the River Adur flows through the village.

The parish of West Grinstead covers an area of 2,584 hectares (6,382 acres or 9.98 sq mi)and consists of the villages of West Grinstead and Partridge Green, and the smaller settlements of Littleworth and Dial Post. In the 2001 census 2,934 people lived in 1099 households. At the 2011 Census the population was 3,054.

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).

"GRINSTEAD (WEST), a village, a parish, and a hundred in Sussex. The village stands on the river Adur, near the Horsham and Shoreham railway, 6¾ miles S of Horsham; and has a station on the railway, and a postoffice under Horsham. The parish includes also the hamlet of Partridge Green; and is in Horsham [registration] district. Acres: 6,658. Real property: £6,871; of which £92 are in the Adur navigation. Population: 1,403. Houses: 235.

"The property is divided among a few. The manor belongs to the Rev. John Goring. Grinstead Park belonged formerly to the Carylls; was visited, in their time, by Pope, when he wrote his Rape of the Lock, and is now the seat of Sir P. Burrell, Bart. The living is a rectory in the diocese of Chichester. Value: £791. Patron: Lord Leconfield. The church is ancient but good; and contains monuments of the Powletts, the Carylls, and the Burrells. There are a Roman Catholic chapel and a national school."

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 West Grinstead
• British History Online. A History of the County of Sussex: Volume 6, Part 1, Bramber Rape: Southern Part, the first of a number of chapters on West Grinstead

• Maps of the local area are to be found on the page for Bramber Rape and on that for Horsham Rural District.