Place:Linchmere, Sussex, England

source: Family History Library Catalog

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

Linchmere, also often spelled Lynchmere, is a village and a civil parish, the northernmost parish in the Chichester District of West Sussex, England. As well as Linchmere village, the parish contains the settlements of Hammer and Camelsdale.

Linchmere parish is bordered to the north by Haslemere in Surrey with a tributary of the River Wey as boundary, and by Fernhurst parish on the east, south and west sides with Bramshott in Hampshire to the northwest.

In the 2001 UK census there were in the civil parish 836 households, with a total population of 2,225. The population at the 2011 UK Census was 2,392 in 917 households. The area of the parish is given as 903 hectares (sq mi).

Hammer

The settlement at Hammer took its name from an iron mill which was active there from before 1573 until at least 1730. There were also other iron works in the district including one partly in what is now Fernhurst parish, in Furnace Wood near Lower Lodge Farm, apparently started a little before 1620. The associated water supply is still named Furnace Pond and is just 2.8 kilometres (1.7 mi) south of Linchmere village centre.

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 Linchmere
• British History Online. A History of the County of Sussex: Volume 4, the Rape of Chichester, section on Linchmere
• 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.