Place:Rumboldswyke, Sussex, England

source: Family History Library Catalog

Rumboldswyke is a former parish located on the southeastern edge of the city of Chichester and became part of the municipal borough at its instigation in 1893. British History Online states that it had an area of only 692 acres. The history of the parish starts with a mill on a manor in 1228. It is fiting that it is still an industrial area.

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).

"RUMBOLDSWYKE, a parish in Westhampnett [registration] district, Sussex; on the South Coast railway, partly within the S E side of Chichester city. Post town: Chichester. Acres: 645. Real property: £3,245. Population in 1851: 318; in 1861: 582. Houses: 126. Population of the city portion in 1861: 167. Hornet hamlet is in the parish; and a number of houses were built, prior to 1861, on ground purchased by a Freehold Land Society. The living is a vicarage in the diocese of Chichester. Value: £234. Patrons: the Dean and Chapter of Chichester. The church has been lately enlarged and restored."

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 Rumboldswyke
• British History Online. A History of the County of Sussex: Volume 4, the Rape of Chichester, section on Rumboldswyke
• Maps of the local area are to be found on pages for Box and Stockbridge Hundred and Chichester Rape.