Place:Birdham, Sussex, England

source: Family History Library Catalog

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

Birdham is a village and civil parish in the Chichester District of West Sussex, England. It is located on the Manhood Peninsula, about five miles (8 km) southwest of the city of Chichester. The parish church is dedicated to St. James although the dedication was to St. Leonard until c 1900.

The nearest railway stations are some three miles (5 km) northeast of the village, at Chichester or Fishbourne.

The village sits on the shores of Chichester Harbour and is home to a locked marina on the site of a former tide mill pond. The tide mill building itself still exists. In between it and Chichester marina are the lockgates to the now disused Chichester Canal originally opened in 1822.

The parish has an area of 6.96 km2 (2.69 sq mi). In the UK census of 2011 it had a population of 1,483. It is an area of dispersed settlements with no defined centre with a single store and no pubs. The enclosure of Manhood Common led to the development of small farms but the rapid rise in population only began in the 1930s.

During World War 2, the tide mill and associated boat yards became "HMS Sea Serpent" in 1942. The various holiday camps in the area were used as billets for troops training for amphibious landings, especially D Day.

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