Place:Chailey, Sussex, England

NameChailey
Alt namesChailey Greensource: settlement in parish
Chailey North Commonsource: settlement in parish
Chailey South Commonsource: settlement in parish
North Chaileysource: settlement in parish
South Chaileysource: settlement in parish
South Streetsource: settlement in parish
TypeParish
Coordinates50.957°N 0.0186°W
Located inSussex, England
Also located inEast Sussex, England     (1865 - )
See alsoLewes Rape, Sussex, Englandrape in which it was located
Street Hundred, Sussex, Englandhundred in which it was located
Chailey Rural, Sussex, Englandrural district 1894-1974
Lewes District, East Sussex, Englanddistrict municipality covering the area since 1974
source: Family History Library Catalog

Chailey is a village and civil parish in the Lewes District of East Sussex, England. It is located 7 miles north of Lewes, on the A272 road from Winchester to Canterbury. The Prime Meridian passes just to the east of Chailey.

The parish consists of the settlements: South Chailey (which also incorporates Chailey South Common), South Street, Chailey itself (also known as Chailey Green) and North Chailey (which incorporates the Chailey North Common).

A windmill is situated on Red House Common. A second mill on was located on the South Common in South Chailey, but it has worn away over time. The parish church is dedicated to St. Peter and is recorded as having been built in 1256. At one time Chailey had more churches than pubs.

Chailey is reputed to be the inspiration for one of the children's television series created by the puppetteer Gordon Murray. Chailey was "Chigley"; Plumpton was "Trumpton"; and Wivelsfield Green was "Camberwick Green".

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).

"CHAILEY, a village, a parish, and a subdistrict in Lewes [registration] district, Sussex. The village stands 3 miles E of Cook's Bridge [railway] station, and 5½ N by W of Lewes; and has a post office under Lewes, and a fair on 29 July. The parish comprises 5,889 acres. Real property: £5,610. Population: 1,344. Houses: 245.
"The property is divided among a few. The living is a rectory in the diocese of Chichester. Value: £505. Patrons: Mrs. Hepburne and Mrs. Blencowe. The church is early English, and good. There are a national school, a workhouse, and charities £9."

Research Tips

  • The East Sussex Record Office, The Keep, Woollards Way, Brighton, BN1 9BP, United Kingdom (email thekeep@eastsussex.gov.uk) holds material for the Archdeaconry of Lewes, present-day East Sussex, and therefore generally holds historical material for East Sussex parishes only. An on-line catalogue for some of the collections held by the East Sussex Record Office (ESRO) is available under the Access to Archives (A2A) project (a nationwide facility housed at The National Archives, Kew).
  • 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.
  • Further resources may be found on GENUKI's main page on Sussex.
  • 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 the parish of Chailey
  • British History Online. A History of the County of Sussex: Volume 7, Lewes Hundred, section on Chailey
  • Maps of the local area are to be found on the WeRelate page for Lewes Rape and on that for Chailey Rural District.


This page uses content from the English Wikipedia. The original content was at Chailey. The list of authors can be seen in the page history. As with WeRelate, the content of Wikipedia is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.