Place:Graffham, Sussex, England

source: Family History Library Catalog

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

Graffham is a village and civil parish now in West Sussex, England, situated on the northern escarpment of the South Downs. The civil parish has been redrawn since local administration regulations were revised in 1974 and it is now made up of the village of Graffham, part of the hamlets of Selham, and South Ambersham. These two latter places were once civil parishes themselves. Selham has been described separately.

Graffham was listed in the Domesday Book (1086) in the ancient hundred of Easebourne as having 13 households: seven villagers and six smallholders; with land for ploughing, woodland for pigs and a church; the parish's value to the lord of the manor was £8.

In the 1861 census, the parish covered 1,658 acres (671 ha) and had a population of 410. Selham was still a separate parish covering 1,042 acres (422 ha) with a population of 123.

In the 2011 census, the parish covered 11.81 km² (2,917 acres or 4.56 sq mi) and had 267 households with a total population of 516.

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 Graffham
• British History Online. A History of the County of Sussex: Volume 4, the Rape of Chichester, section on Graffham
• Maps of the local area are to be found on the page for Chichester Rape and on that for Midhurst Rural District, and also that for Easebourne Hundred.