Place:Linch, Sussex, England

source: Family History Library Catalog

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

Linch is a civil parish in the Chichester District of West Sussex, England, 5 miles (8.0 km) northwest of Midhurst. It has an eighteenth-century church dedicated to St Luke and a loose collection of hamlets (unnamed by Wikipedia).

In the 2001 census there were 29 households in the civil parish with a total population of 78. The area covered extended for 3.44 km2 (1.33 sq mi). There are no statistics for 2011, but in that census parishes of population of under 100 persons were merged with a neighbouring parish. A note to which this parish might be has not be found, but it could well be Fernhurst.

Linch (as "Lince") was listed in the Domesday Book (1086) in the ancient hundred of Easebourne as having 14 households: seven villagers, five smallholders and two slaves; with woodland, meadows, ploughing land and a church, it had a value to the lord of the manor, Robert, son of Theobald, of £5.

The following description from John Marius Wilson's Imperial Gazetteer of England and Wales of 1870-72 is provided by the website A Vision of Britain Through Time (University of Portsmouth Department of Geography).

"LINCH, or LYNCH, a parish in Midhurst [registration] district, Sussex; on the Midhurst and Haslemere railway, 4½ miles N by W of Midhurst. Post town: Midhurst. Acres: 1,220. Real property: £733. Population: 111. Houses: 19. The property is divided among a few. The manor was known at Domesday as Lince; belonged then to Ulric; passed to Viscount Montague,-afterwards to W. S. Poyntz, Esq.; and belongs now to the Earl of Egmont. A detached tract, called Linch House and Cottages, lies near Bepton. The living is a rectory in the diocese of Chichester. Value: £81. Patron: the Earl of Egmont. The church is a plain building, mainly of about the year 1700; but has a curious E window of much older date."

The entry from "British History Online" (see reference below) describes many changes in the ownership of the manors of the parish over centuries. Many of these were absentee owners and this could have led to the great drop in population.

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 Linch
• British History Online. A History of the County of Sussex: Volume 4, the Rape of Chichester, section on Linch
• Maps of the local area are to be found on the page for Chichester Rape and on that for Midhurst Rural District, and also that for Easebourne Hundred.