Place:Hailsham, 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

Hailsham is a civil parish and the largest of the five towns in the Wealden District of East Sussex, England. It is mentioned in the Domesday Book of 1086, where it is called Hamelesham. The town of Hailsham has a history of industry and agriculture.

In the county of East Sussex, about 6 miles (10 km) from the coast, and between the well-wooded hills of the southern Forest Ridge and the undulating chalk countryside of the South Downs, Hailsham is surrounded by "much attractive and unspoilt scenery". Hailsham is the largest settlement in the southern half of the Wealden District, and the largest inland town in East Sussex with around 8,500 homes and a population of just over 20,000.

The civic parish of Hailsham is approximately 3 miles (4.8 km) in breadth and 4 miles (6.4 km) from north to south between its extreme points. The area covered is 19.4 km2 (7.5 sq mi) and the population at the 2011 UK census was 20,476. This yields a density of 2,652/sq mi (1,024/km2).

Hailsham's traditional industry was rope making, which included supplying ropes for public hangings in Great Britain and the Colonies.

For more information, see the EN Wikipedia article Hailsham. The Wikipedia article includes a detailed timeline from before the arrival of the Romans in 43AD up to the present.

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