Place:Washington, Sussex, England

source: Family History Library Catalog

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

Washington is a village and civil parish in the Horsham District of West Sussex, England. The village is located five miles (8 km) west of Steyning and three miles (4.8 km) east of Storrington on the north-south A24 road between Horsham and Worthing. The parish covers an area of 1,276 hectares (3,150 acres or 4.93 sq mi). In the 2001 UK census 1,930 people lived in 703 households. At the 2011 UK Census the population of the civil parish was 1,867.

The village lies at the foot of the South Downs escarpment. The Anglican parish church is dedicated to St. Mary. The hamlet named Rock lies to the north of the A283 road.

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).

"WASHINGTON, a village, a parish, and a [registration] sub-district, in Thakeham [registration] district, Sussex. The village stands 4½ miles WNW of Steyning [railway] station, and has a post-office under Hurstperpoint. The parish comprises 3,162 acres. Real property: £4,232; of which £53 are in quarries. Population: 908. Houses: 186.

"The property is divided chiefly among four. Highden House belongs to Sir --- Goring, Bart; and Rowdell House, to Major F. Sandham. The living is a vicarage in the diocese of Chichester. Value: £200. Patron: Magdalen College, Oxford. The church was restored in 1867."

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 Washington
• British History Online. A History of the County of Sussex: Volume 6, Part 1, Bramber Rape: Southern Part, section on Washington
• Maps of the local area are to be found on the page for Arundel Rape and on that for Thakeham Rural District.