Place:Eartham, Sussex, England

source: Family History Library Catalog

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

Eartham is a village and civil parish in the Chichester District of West Sussex, England located 8.5 kilometres (5.3 mi) northeast of Chichester and east of the A285 road.

The parish church is dedicated to St. Margaret. The adjoining Manor Farm is the centre of a large farming enterprise. Eartham Wood to the north is an area of open access woodland, mostly beech trees through which the Roman road Stane Street runs. The route here today is followed only by bridleways and footpaths.

The parish has a land area of 836 hectares (2066 acres or 3.23 sq mi). In the 2001 census 104 people lived in 42 households. At the 2011 Census the very small hamlet and former parish of Up Waltham or Upwaltham was included and the population was 111.

Eartham House

Eartham House was established by Thomas Hayley in 1743. Following his death the house became home to his son the poet William Hayley from 1774 to 1800. It was enlarged before he sold it to the Member of Parliament and statesman William Huskisson. The church contains a memorial to Hayley's son Thomas by his friend sculptor John Flaxman. The present building was designed by Sir Edwin Lutyens following the purchase of the house by William Bird in 1905. The house is now occupied by a co-educational independent school for children aged 2 to 13 years.

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 Eartham
• British History Online. A History of the County of Sussex: Volume 4, the Rape of Chichester, section on Eartham
• Maps of the local area are to be found on pages for Box and Stockbridge Hundred and Chichester Rape.