Place:Houghton, Sussex, England

source: Family History Library Catalog

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

Houghton is a low-population, linear settlement with two main farms and a large elevated tract of land which is mostly wooded. The civil parish is in the Arun District of West Sussex, England. It is on the River Arun, where it has a bridge to a rural part of Amberley, 3 miles (5 km) north of Arundel. The population of the parish was assessed for the 2011 UK census as less than 100 persons. As a result its population has been added in to the statistics for the neighbouring parish of South Stoke. (Contrastingly, Wikipedia reports its population at 153 for the same year.) The parish covers an area of 12.59 km2 (4.86 sq mi).

In the village is a simple two-cell church dedicated to St Nicholas, originally built in the 13th century but largely rebuilt in 1857.

A well-wooded section of Arundel Park is in the parish, as is Houghton Forest which is free public access. Houghton Forest covers the west of the parish.

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