Place:Colgate, Sussex, England

source: Family History Library Catalog

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

Colgate is a small village and civil parish in the Horsham District of West Sussex, England, about four miles (6 km) northeast of Horsham.

There is a range of architectural styles in the village, with houses present from several different design eras. In the late twentieth century there have been some small developments of new houses in the centre of the village.

Nearby settlements include villages of a similar size, architectural design, layout, and administrative status in Faygate and Pease Pottage (part of the parish of Slaugham, and the village is located close to the towns of both Horsham and Crawley.

Colgate parish covers an area of 22.44 km2 (8.66 sq mi). In the UK census of 2011 it had a population of 1,087.

The area is associated with the Wealden iron industry, "Col" possibly referring to charcoal burners. Many hammer ponds are still visible within the parish. Gate is thought to refer to an entrance to the historically much larger St. Leonards Forest. The centre of the village was dominated by the Red Cedar Farm and Colgate House. Over the road to the north was Black Hill wood, part of the traditional St Leonards Forest that no longer exists.

In 1887 the ecclesiastical parish, for which the living benefice was a vicarage of a small Early English style Victorian church, was subordinated by the larger civil parish of Horsham and Beeding thanks to the local government reorganization of 1885. The population at the time was 485.

The following description from John Bartholomew's Gazetteer of the British Isles of 1887 is provided by the website A Vision of Britain Through Time (University of Portsmouth Department of Geography).

"Colegate, eccl. dist., Horsham and Lower Beeding pars., W. Sussex, population 481."

According to A Vision of Britain Through Time Colgate became part of Lower Beeding parish until the nationwide reorganization of local administration in 1974 when it was considered to be large enough to be a parish in its own right.

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 Colgate