Place:Fittleworth, 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

Fittleworth is a village and large civil parish in the Chichester District of West Sussex, England located seven kilometres (3 miles) west from Pulborough on the A283 road and three miles (5 km) southeast from Petworth. The parish is within the ancient divisions of the Bury Hundred and the Rape (county subdivision) of Arundel. The village is bounded on the south by the Rother Navigation (a canal).

In the 2001 UK census the parish covered 1,164 hectares (2,875 acres or 4.49 sq mi) and had 405 households with a total population of 931 people. The 2011 UK Census count of 978 included the hamlets of Egdean and Stopham (both parishes with populations of less than 100 persons).

The manor of Fittleworth, in the reign of Edward I, was held by William Dawtrey and subsequently by the Bishopric of Chichester. The Lee and Stanley families were major landowners in Fittleworth through the centuries, as well as the Duke of Norfolk. Also among major property owners were the families of Levett and Edsaw.

For more information, see the EN Wikipedia article Fittleworth. This is worth reading, but not copying.

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 Fittleworth
• British History Online. A History of the County of Sussex does not cover the Bury Hundred.
• Maps of the local area are to be found on the page for Arundel Rape and on that for Petworth Rural District.