Place:Tangmere, Sussex, England

source: Family History Library Catalog

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

Tangmere is a village and civil parish in the Chichester District of West Sussex, England. The village is located three miles (5 km) northeast of Chichester, but the parish is long and narrow and stretches to the southeast from the village. The parish has a land area of 467.3 hectares (1,154 acres). In the 2001 census 2,462 people lived in 963 households. At the 2011 Census the population was 2,625.

History

The original Saxon village lies a mile south of the Roman road of Stane Street, which linked Londinium [London] with "Noviomagus Reginorum", now known as Chichester. In 677 the controversial Bishop of York, Wilfrid (later Saint Wilfrid), came to Selsey and converted the South Saxons to Christianity. In 680 a charter, possibly by the king, states: “I Caedwalla... have granted his brethren serving God at the church of St Andrew... the land of 10 hides which is called Tangmere”. A hide equated to 120 acres (49 hectares).

The Domesday Survey records that Tangmere had a population of around 120, with the stone church of St. Andrew built after the Norman conquest. Originally built of timber, the Saxon church was replaced in 1100 by a stone and timber building. Difficult to date precisely, the building incorporates scavenged and reused stone, including pre-Christian carved figures and Roman bricks, while the size of the yew tree by the present door suggests an ancient sacred site. The church was added to in both the 12th century and in the Victorian era.

In 1341 King Edward II granted the new Archbishop of Canterbury the right to hold a fair at Tangmere on St Andrew's Day. The event is still held by the church every autumn, resulting in the source of the church's name.

The Manor of Tangmere was owned by the Archbishop of Canterbury until 1542, when Henry VIII claimed possession. It later passed to Cardinal Archbishop Pole and then to the crown again, being granted by Elizabeth I to Richard Baker and then Sir Richard Sackville, a cousin of her mother Anne Boleyn.

In 1579 the manor became part of the Halnaker estate, which was later acquired by the 3rd Duke of Richmond. When he died in 1806, the Goodwood estate, including Tangmere, totalled 17,000 acres (69 km²). Goodwood maintained ownership of Tangmere land until the 1930s.

Tangmere was a detached parish of Aldwick Hundred. All the surrounding parishes were part of Box and Stockgrove Hundred. It only joined with the parishes around it when it became part of the Westhampnett Rural District in 1894.

RAF Tangmere

For more information, see the EN Wikipedia article RAF Tangmere.

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