Place:Lyminster, Sussex, England

source: Family History Library Catalog

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

Lyminster is now a village which is the main settlement of Lyminster and Crossbush civil parish, in the Arun District of West Sussex, England. It is 2 miles north of the town centre of Littlehampton.

Lyminster (once known as Leominster) has an area of 5.87 km2 (2.27 sq mi) and a population of 369 in the UK census of 2011.

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).

"LEOMINSTER, or LYMINSTER, a parish in Worthing district, Sussex; on the South Coast railway, at the quondam Arundel station, 1½ mile E of Ford Junction station, near the river Arun, and 2 miles SSE of Arundel. It contains the hamlets of Crossbush, Toddington, and Wick; and includes the tything of Warningcamp [now a separate civil parish]. Post town: Arundel. Acres: 3,586. Real property: £8,305. Population in 1851: 794; in 1861: 908. Houses: 188. The increase of population arose partly from the facility with which freehold land is obtained for building purposes, and partly from the proximity of the parish to the port of Littlehampton.

"Leominster House is the seat of T. Evans, Esq.; Brookfield, of E.Holmes, Esq.; Crossbush, of R. Upfold, Esq.; and Dover Hall, of Beauclerk, Esq. A small nunnery was here in the Saxon times; became a priory of Benedictine nuns, under the abbey of Almanasche in Normandy; and was given, by Henry VI., to Eton college.

"The living is a vicarage in the diocese of Chichester. Value: £350.* Patron: the Bishop of London. The church is very ancient; includes transition Norman and early English portions: and has a very lofty chancel arch, and a square tower. A church was once in Warningcamp, but has entirely disappeared. There is a free school for Leominster and Rustington."

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 Lyminster
• British History Online. A History of the County of Sussex does not cover the Bury Hundred.
• Maps of the local area are to be found on the page for Arundel Rape and on that for East Preston Rural District.