Place:Lurgashall, Sussex, England

source: Family History Library Catalog

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

Lurgashall is a village and civil parish in the Chichester District of West Sussex, England, 6.5 km (4 ml) northwest of Petworth and just inside the new South Downs National Park. The church of St. Laurence, The Noah's Ark public house, the old school and several old houses are built around a village green which contains the village cricket pitch. In the UK Census of 2001 the parish covered 21 km² (8.10 sq mi) and had 220 households with a total population of 581. The population at the 2011 UK Census was 609.

The church has had many additions over the years, it still retains some evidence of the original Saxon structure.

The village had become almost extinct in 1100, and finds no mention in the Domesday Book of 1086. After the Norman Conquest, the King gave the Lurgashall area to a Norman family called Alta Rippa, who built a Manor House there in about 1100. The Manor House itself has not survived but the area that the estate occupied is now Park Farm, which gets its name from the Deer Park which the Alta Rippa family established in about 1200. The coming of the Manor revived the village's fortunes and it grew in importance throughout the feudal period.

An account of what it was like to live in the village in the early part of the 20th century is given in the book A view of Edwardian Lurgashall by H. S. Roots.

The following description from John Marius Wilson's Imperial Gazetteer of England and Wales of 1870-72 is provided by the website A Vision of Britain Through Time (University of Portsmouth Department of Geography).

"LURGASHALL, a village and a parish in Midhurst [registration] district, Sussex. The village stands 5 miles NW of Petworth, and 5 SE of Haslemere [railway] station; and has a post office under Petworth. The parish includes a detached portion, called Bittlesham Cottage; and contains places called Rundhurst, Dial Green, Hill Grove, Old Mill, Boxland, Diddesfield, and Ramsfold. Acres: 4,850. Real property: £3,493. Population: 727. Houses: 119. The property is divided among a few. The living is a rectory in the diocese of Chichester. Value: £463. Patron: Lord Leconfield. There is a national school."

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 Lurgashall
• British History Online. A History of the County of Sussex does not cover the Rotherbridge Hundred.
• Maps of the local area are to be found on the page for Chichester Rape and on that for Midhurst Rural District.