Place:Rotherfield, Sussex, England

source: Family History Library Catalog

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

Rotherfield is a village and civil parish in the Wealden District of East Sussex, England . It is one of the largest parishes in East Sussex. There are three villages in the parish: Rotherfield, Mark Cross and Eridge. (The last two are redirected here.) The River Rother, which drains much of the county and discharges at Rye Harbour, has its source on the south side of the hill on which Rotherfield village is built.

There are written records of Rotherfield in the 8th century; it was also included in the Domesday Book of 1086 and in various other medieval documents. In Tudor times three of the inhabitants were burned at the stake for their religious beliefs.

In the 18th century, the road through the village became part of the Turnpike Trust road between Tunbridge Wells and Lewes. Until 1880, when a new ecclesiastical parish was formed, Crowborough was also part of the parish; in 1905 the latter became a civil parish in its own right.

Eridge or Eridge Green

Eridge or Eridge Green (redirected here) is a small village but not a civil parish: it is situated on a sandstone ridge in the northern borderlands of East Sussex next to Kent, having some publicly accessible woodland and trails with far-reaching views across the Kent and Sussex countryside. Although the village is in East Sussex, its post town of Tunbridge Wells is in the former postal county of Kent.

Mark Cross

Mark Cross (redirected here) is located to the east of Rotherfield, at the junction of the A267 road and B2100 Lamberhurst to Crowborough road. One notable residence is Walter's Mill, a house converted from a windmill.

Boarshead

Boarshead, a hamlet within the parish, (redirected here) developed around the A26 road between Crowborough and Eridge.

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 Rotherfield
• Maps of the local area are to be found on the WeRelate page for Lewes Rape and on that for Chailey Rural District.
• A History of the County of Sussex provided by British History Online does not include articles on parishes that were part of Pevensey Rape.