Place:New Fishbourne, Sussex, England

source: Family History Library Catalog

New Fishbourne is a village and parish, a mile and a half west from Chichester. The road from Chichester to Portsmouth and the South Coast Railway pass through the parish. The living is a rectory, value £180 per annum, in the gift of the Lord Chancellor, and held by the Rev. Matthew Parrington, M.A., of Christ's College, Cambridge. The principal landowners are Francis Smith, Esq., of Salt Hill Park, and the Rev. Sir Thomas Miller, Bart. The area is 610 acres, and the population in 1861 was 341. Old Park is a mile and a half southwest. (Source: Kelly's Post Office Directory of Essex, Herts, Middlesex, Kent, Surrey and Sussex, 1867)

In 1933 part of the parish was absorbed by Chichester Municipal Borough with the remaining part continuing as a civil parish within the Chichester Rural District. In 1974 this section became part of the Chichester District, a much wider local authority. The whole of New Fishbourne can be considered a suburb of Chichester. (See Wikipedia on Fishbourne.)

Old Fishbourne is a hamlet in the neighbouring parish of Bosham, to the west. It is the location of the Fishbourne Roman Palace, a large Roman villa built in 75AD and discovered in 1960.

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 New Fishbourne
• British History Online. A History of the County of Sussex: Volume 4, the Rape of Chichester, section on New Fishbourne
• Maps of the local area are to be found on pages for Box and Stockbridge Hundred and Chichester Rape. Chichester Harbour is a fairly landlocked, but tidal body of water. For parishes and towns to the west and south of Chichester, it is worthwhile inspecting "Google Earth" to see how the water table effects the land at low tide.