Place:Ripe, Sussex, England

source: Family History Library Catalog

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

Ripe is a village within the Wealden District of East Sussex, England, and was formerly a civil parish within Hailsham Rural District. It is located eight miles (13 km) east of Lewes in the valley north of the South Downs.

The village, in a mainly rural area, is mentioned in the Domesday Book of 1086. The 13th-century parish church is dedicated to St John the Baptist.

At the end of the Anglo-Saxon period the parish was owned by Earl Harold Godwinson, who become King Harold II and was killed at the Battle of Hastings in 1066. The Domesday Book mentions that 'Rype' and 'Echentone' which were owned by Richer de Aquila (L'Aigle), and the church is also mentioned in the 1291 Pope Nicholas IV Taxatio ecclesiastical tax assessment survey.

Ripe was merged with the neighbouring parish of Chalvington in 1974 when the Wealden District was formed out of Hailsham Rural District. The new parish is known as Chalvington with Ripe. It has an area of 11.12 km2 (4.29 sq mi) and in the UK census of 2011 it had a population of 953.

Research Tips

• 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.
• GENUKI on Ripe
• Maps of the local area are to be found on the WeRelate page for Pevensey Rape and on that for Hailsham Rural District or Eastbourne Rural District.
• A History of the County of Sussex provided by British History Online does not include articles on parishes that were part of Pevensey Rape.