Place:Duncton, Sussex, England

source: Family History Library Catalog

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

Duncton is a village and civil parish in the Chichester District of West Sussex, England located 3 mi (4.8 km) south of Petworth on the A285 road.

The parish has a land area of 800 ha (1,977 acres or 3.09 sq mi). In the 2001 UK census 356 people lived in 156 households. The population at the 2011 UK Census was 345.

The village has an Anglican church, a Roman catholic church and a pub named The Cricketers.

Duncton Mill at the foot of the South Downs escarpment was powered by a large spring flowing from the chalk strata. A stable flow of water at a constant temperature throughout the year is ideal for its present use as a trout hatchery.

To the east of the village on the border with Barlavington civil parish is Burton Park, a stately home now converted into a number of residences.

Woollen cloth making was an important local industry in the medieval period. Two Duncton clothiers, R Harding and J Goble, left inventories in 1621 and 1622 respectively, with Goble having owned three pairs of finishing shears.

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 Duncton
• British History Online. A History of the County of Sussex does not cover the Rotherbridge Hundred.
• Maps of the local area are to be found on the page for Arundel Rape and on that for Petworth Rural District.