Place:Durrington, Sussex, England

source: Family History Library Catalog

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

Durrington is a neighbourhood and former civil parish in the Worthing District or Borough of Worthing of West Sussex, England. Historically in Sussex, in the rape of Bramber, it is situated near the A27 road, 2.3 miles (3.7 km) northwest of the town centre of Worthing.

Durrington was first recorded in AD934 as a Saxon estate. In that year, King Athelstan granted some of the land to one of his thegns. By the time of the Domesday survey in 1086, Robert le Sauvage—lord of the manor of nearby Broadwater—held the land. The civil and ecclesiastical parish was smaller than the Saxon estate: it extended for about 2 miles (3.2 km) from north to south and 0.7 miles (1.1 km) from east to west.

The Domesday survey recorded that Durrington had "a church, eight acres of meadow and a wood of ten hogs".

Modern Durrington lies within the Borough of Worthing and lies mostly in the Durrington Ward with neighbouring West Durrington forming Castle Ward. Each ward has two councillors representing their area on Worthing Borough Council. The population of the Durrington Ward as at the 2011 UK census was 5,528.

Until the 16th century when it became a parish in its own righth, Durrington formed part of the parish of West Tarring. The parish of Durrington was enlarged in 1902 to include parts of the parishes of Tarring and Broadwater. Durrington became part of the Municipal Borough of Worthing in 1929.

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 Durrington
• British History Online. A History of the County of Sussex: Volume 6, Part 1, Bramber Rape: Southern Part, section on Durrington
• Maps of the local area are to be found on the page for Arundel Rape and on that for East Preston Rural District.