Place:Rusper, Sussex, England

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

Rusper is a village and civil parish in the Horsham District of West Sussex, England. It lies 4.1 miles (6.6 km) north of the town of Horsham and 4.2 miles (6.8 km) west of Crawley. Rusper parish covers 25.89 km2 (10.00 sq mi), which is most of the northern area between Horsham and Crawley. It is governed by the Horsham District Council based in Horsham. The parish population at the 2001 UK census was 1,389 people; by the 2011 UK census the population had increased to 1,635.

Rusper is only 5 miles from London Gatwick Airport, the probable place of employment for its 21st century populace. It is on the watershed between the River Arun to the west and the River Mole to the east, with predominantly weald clay soils.

Rusper Priory, a priory of Benedictine nuns, was established in the parish c.1200.

The Parish Church of St Mary Magdalene is a Grade I listed building with a good medieval tower.

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 Rusper
• British History Online. A History of the County of Sussex: Volume 6, Part 3, Bramber Rape: North-Eastern Part, the first of a number of chapters on Rusper