Place:Up Waltham, Sussex, England

source: Family History Library Catalog

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

Up Waltham is a village and parish in the Chichester District of West Sussex, England located twelve kilometres (8 miles) north east of Chichester on the A285 road. It was a civil parish, but is now in the civil parish of Eartham. This small parish on the South Downs consists of a small early Norman church and adjoining farmstead in an east-west aligned dry valley in the chalk. There are a few more houses at Benges where the A285 to Chichester leaves the valley. From Benges Hill the parish extends south as far as the disused Roman road of Stane Street, in an area of open access woodland.

The land area of the parish is 494 hectares (1,221 acres), with a population in the 2001 census of 25 people living in 10 households. Because of its low population, in the 2011 UK census the parish has been added to one of its neighbours, probably Eartham.

The early Norman church is dedicated to St. Mary the Virgin. A description is included in Wikipedia. Parish records of births and deaths from 1592 are held by the West Sussex Record Office.

The ecclesiastical parish is now jointly run with Tillington and Duncton, the Rector living at Tillington.

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.

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