Place:Ditchling, Sussex, England

source: Getty Thesaurus of Geographic Names

source: Family History Library Catalog

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

Ditchling is a village and civil parish in the Lewes District of East Sussex, England. The village is contained within the boundaries of the South Downs National Park; the order confirming the establishment of the park was signed in Ditchling.

The village lies at the foot of the South Downs in East Sussex, but very close to the border with West Sussex. The settlement stands around a crossroads with Brighton to the south, Burgess Hill and Haywards Heath to the north, Keymer and Hassocks to the west, and Lewes to the east, and is built on a slight spur of land between the Downs to the south and Lodge Hill to the north. Ditchling Beacon, one of the highest points on the South Downs, overlooks the village.

Ditchling Common, north of the village, is the source of the eastern River Adur which meets with the western River Adur near Henfield and flows on to the English Channel at Shoreham by Sea.

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).

"DITCHLING, or Ditchelling, a village, a parish, and a [registration] sub-district in Lewes [registration] district, Sussex. The village stands near the Roman road to Pevensey, 1¼ mile E of Hassocks-Gate [railway] station, and 3 ESE of Hurstperpoint; has a post office under Hurstperpoint, and fairs on 6 April and 12 Oct.; and was once a market-town.

"The parish comprises 4,183 acres. Real property: £5,901. Population: 1,082. Houses: 220. The property is divided among a few. Ditchling Beacon is the highest ground of the South chalk downs of Sussex; has an altitude of 858 feet above sea-level; is crowned with remains of a square camp, probably Roman; and commands a very extensive and grand view. The living is a vicarage in the diocese of Chichester. Value: £200. Patron: the Lord Chancellor. The church is cruciform, partly transition: Norman, partly early English. There are a Unitarian chapel, a national school, a workhouse, and charities £46."

In 1934 the northernmost 10% (421 acres) of the parish was transferred to Burgess Hill Urban District.

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 Ditchling
• British History Online. A History of the County of Sussex: Volume 7, Lewes Hundred, section on Ditchling
• Maps of the local area are to be found on the WeRelate page for Lewes Rape and on that for Chailey Rural District.