Place:Piddinghoe, Sussex, England

source: Family History Library Catalog

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

Piddinghoe is a village and civil parish in the Lewes District of East Sussex, England. It is located in the valley of the River Ouse between Lewes and Newhaven, five miles (8 km) south of the former, and downstream of Southease. The area of the civil parish is 3.8 km2 (1.5 sq mi) and in the UK census of 2011 it had a population of 255.

The village was once a central player in Sussex smuggling. It is also notable for having the only remaining bottle-shaped brick kiln in the country.

St. John's Church is one of three in the Ouse Valley with a round Norman tower, the others being at nearby Southease and Lewes. Piddinghoe is regularly visited by sailing enthusiasts as the body of water by the village is a fine location for dinghy sailing and windsurfing.

Piddinghoe does not appear in the Domesday Book of 1086, but by 1220 a manor of that name was in the hands of William de Warenne.

The village was part of the Holmstrow Hundred until the abolition of hundreds in the 19th century.

In 1929 part of the parish on the coast was made into the parish of Peacehaven. Piddinghoe parish was part of Newhaven Rural District between 1894 and 1934. In 1934 Newhaven Rural District was abolished and it became part of Chailey Rural District until 1974 when it joined the Lewes District.

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 Piddinghoe
• British History Online. A History of the County of Sussex: Volume 7, Lewes Hundred, section on Piddinghoe
• Maps of the local area are to be found on the WeRelate page for Lewes Rape and on that for Newhaven Rural District.