Place:Peacehaven, 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

Peacehaven is a town and civil parish in the Lewes District of East Sussex, England. It is located above the chalk cliffs of the South Downs approximately six miles (9.7 km) east of Brighton city centre, on the A259 road. Its site coincides with the point where the Greenwich meridian crosses the English south coast. Peacehaven is next to Telscombe Cliffs, a later western extension to Peacehaven, which lies within a separate parish and has a separate town council. The area of the civil parish is 5.2 km2 (2.0 sq mi) and the population, according to the UK census of 2011 was 14,067.

Peacehaven was established in 1916 by entrepreneur Charles Neville, who had purchased land in the parish of Piddinghoe; he then set up a company to develop the site (he also eventually built nearby towns Saltdean and parts of Rottingdean). The original name of the settlement was New Anzac-on-Sea, but was changed to Peacehaven in 1917. It became a separate civil parish in 1929.

The town was originally formed for retiring World War I veterans in order for them to escape and recover from the effects of the war. The land was also cheap and, as a result, working-class families from the city started to purchase plots and gradually build makeshift homes for weekends and holidays. Inhabitants felt a sense of freedom in living off what they needed and enjoying a simpler life away from the busy, polluted city. By 1924 there were 3,000 people living in Peacehaven. Original houses were often very temporary affairs (some were old railway carriages). Others were constructed from former army huts, brought from North Camp near Seaford.

There are two listed farmsteads in the town: Halcombe Farm House built in the 17th century, and Hoddern Farm House from the 18th century.

For more information, see the EN Wikipedia article Peacehaven.

Research Tips

• Nineteenth century and earlier information for the area will be found under the parish of Piddinghoe.
• The East Sussex Record Office, The Keep, Woollards Way, Brighton, BN1 9BP, United Kingdom (email thekeep@eastsussex.gov.uk) holds material for the Archdeaconry of Lewes, present-day East Sussex, and therefore generally holds historical material for East Sussex parishes only. An on-line catalogue for some of the collections held by the East Sussex Record Office (ESRO) is available under the Access to Archives (A2A) project (a nationwide facility housed at The National Archives, Kew).
• 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.
• Further resources may be found on GENUKI's main page on Sussex.
• 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.
• British History Online. A History of the County of Sussex: Volume 7, Lewes Hundred, section on Piddinghoe
• Maps of the local area are to be found on the WeRelate page for Lewes Rape and on that for Newhaven Rural District.