Place:Findon, Sussex, England

source: Getty Thesaurus of Geographic Names

source: Family History Library Catalog

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

Findon is a semi-rural clustered village and civil parish in the Arun District of West Sussex, England, 4 miles (6.4 km) north of Worthing. The modern day "ward" stretches southwest to Patching with a total ward population as at the 2011 census of 2,557.

The parish is on the slopes of and between two hills: Cissbury with its iron age hill fort to the east and a steep knoll Church Hill to the west. A further escarpment to the West and North stretches along the borders of the area. On the two named hills are remains of prehistoric flint mines where shafts were sunk about 40 feet (12 metres) to reach the best seams of flint (commonly used as a building material) which were mined from radiating galleries. The village is now bypassed by the A24 road as it crosses the South Downs: the bypass was constructed in 1938. A modern settlement to the south of the village, inside the boundary of the Borough of Worthing is called Findon Valley.

The parish church, dedicated to St John the Baptist, stands to the west of the village and the A24 road near the 18th century mansion Findon Place.

Contiguously to the southeast is the sole sub-locality, Nepcote which faces Nepcote Green, the public parkland venue for the annual Findon sheep fair held in early September. Originally a charter fair dating from as early as 1261 many thousands of sheep were penned on the green for sale in earlier times. Nowadays the fair is a sheep show and funfair.

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