Place:Lower Beeding, Sussex, England

source: Family History Library Catalog

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

Lower Beeding is a village and civil parish in the Horsham District of West Sussex, England. The village lies on the B2110, B2115 and A281 roads 3.5 miles (6 km) southeast from Horsham, and is centred on Holy Trinity Church and The Plough public house, where the B2115 meets the B2110. The parish hamlets are Crabtree to the south of the village, and Ashfold Crossways and Plummer's Plain to the northeast. At Plummer's Plain there is a spring that is the official source of the River Ouse, which eventually reaches the sea at Newhaven.

Lower Beeding parish covers an area of 18.45 km2 (7.12 sq mi) and had a population of 1,001 in the UK census of 2001, increasing slightly to 1,022 in the 2011 UK census.

In the early 13th century the monks of Sele Priory (St Peter's Church, Upper Beeding) began a mission to the area of St Leonard's Forest near Horsham, and established a small mission base, naming it Lower Beeding. Despite being some 10 miles (16 km) away, Lower Beeding remained a part of (Upper) Beeding parish until Victorian times. The existence of Lower Beeding led to differentiation in the name of the original Beeding in some medieval sources, adding the 'Upper' to the name of the original settlement.

From 1894 until 1974 the parish of Colgate became part of Lower Beeding parish. In the nationwide reorganization of local administration in 1974 it again became a parish in its own right, having increased in size during the period.

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 Lower Beeding
• British History Online. A History of the County of Sussex: Volume 6, Part 1, Bramber Rape: Southern Part, the first of a number of chapters on Lower Beeding
• Maps of the local area are to be found on the page for Bramber Rape and on that for Horsham Rural District.