Place:Herstmonceux, 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

Herstmonceux is a village and civil parish now in the Wealden District of East Sussex, England, which includes Herstmonceux Castle.

Herstmonceux civil parish, includes the village of Cowbeech and the hamlets of Foul Mile, Trolliloes, Cowbeech Hill, Stunts Green, Ginger's Green, Flowers Green and part of Windmill Hill. Cowbeech village is in northwestern part of the parish. Eastbourne is 7 miles southwest of the village of Herstmonceux, and Brighton is 21 miles west-southwest. The parish has an area of 24.7 km2 (9.5 sq mi) and, according to the UK census of 2011, a population of 2,613.

Herstmonceux Castle, 2 miles (3.2 km) southeast of the village, is a former site of the Royal Greenwich Observatory. It is now home to the Bader International Study Centre of Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario, Canada, and the area therefore enjoys an influx of Canadian and other international students during the university year. The castle grounds are also home to the Observatory Science Centre, which is operated by Science Projects Limited, and the Herstmonceux Mediaeval Festival. Buckwell Place, another estate within the parish, was the seat of the Hare family.

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 Herstmonceux
• Maps of the local area are to be found on the WeRelate page for Pevensey Rape and on that for Hailsham Rural District or Eastbourne Rural District.
• A History of the County of Sussex provided by British History Online does not include articles on parishes that were part of Hastings Rape.