Place:Southease, Sussex, England

source: Family History Library Catalog

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

Southease is a hamlet and civil parish in the Lewes District of East Sussex, England. It is located between the A26 road and the C7 road from Lewes to Newhaven. It can also be described as to the west of the River Ouse, Sussex and downstream of Lewes. Most cottages in the hamlet date from the 17th century.

The church in Southease hamlet is dedicated to Saint Peter. The church has one of only three round towers in Sussex, all three built in the first half of the 12th century, and all within the Ouse Valley.

Southease railway station lies roughly a kilometre east over the river and may be reached from the hamlet via a swing bridge. The remains of a slipway on the west bank of the Ouse just north of the bridge faces the 480-foot (146m) prominent landmark of Mount Caburn. The nearest village is Rodmell, about a kilometre to the northwest.

The area of the civil parish is 11.26 km2 (4.35 sq mi). For the 2011 census, parishes with populations of under 100 persons were presented together with that of a neighbouring parish. In this case, the population of Southease was added to that of Rodmell to make a total of 527. In 2007 the population of Southease was locally estimated at 40.

History

For more information, see the EN Wikipedia article Southease.

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