Place:West Dean (near Chichester), Sussex, England

source: Family History Library Catalog

source: Getty Thesaurus of Geographic Names

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

West Dean is a village and civil parish now in the Chichester District in West Sussex, England 5 miles (8 km) north of Chichester on the A286 road just west of Singleton. The parish includes the hamlets of Chilgrove, Preston and Binderton. (Binderton was a separate parish prior to 1974.)

The civil parish has a land area of 6,136 acres (2,483 hectares or 9.59 sq mi). The 2011 UK Census recorded a population of 481. The village is on the Monarch's Way long distance footpath.

West Dean is in the Lavant Valley in the South Downs and has a Church of England parish church. The church and most of the houses are built of flint, in most cases with brick quoins and window dressings.

The Manor of West Dean was in the ancient hundred of Singleton, but was not mentioned by name in the Domesday Book of 1086. In 1861 West Dean was a large Anglican parish and extended to 2,290 acres (930 ha) of arable, pasture, and woodland with a population of 681. Preston, now a farm between West Dean and Binderton, was considered significant enough to be included in the Domesday survey, where it was listed as having seven households: three villagers and four smallholders. It had ploughing lands and 6 acres (2.4 ha) of meadows.

The Church of England parish church of Saint Andrew is a Saxon building from before the Norman conquest of England of 1066. It was badly damaged by a fire in 1934 but has been restored.

West Dean House is a Georgian "Gothick" country house designed by James Wyatt and built in 1804 for Baron Selsey of the Peachey family.

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