Place:Seaford, Sussex, England

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source: Family History Library Catalog

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Seaford is a town in East Sussex, England, east of Newhaven and west of Eastbourne.

In the Middle Ages, Seaford was one of the main ports serving Southern England, but the town's fortunes declined due to coastal sedimentation silting up its harbour and persistent raids by French pirates. The coastal confederation of Cinque Ports in the mediaeval period consisted of forty-two towns and villages; Seaford was included under the "Limb" of Hastings. Between 1350 and 1550, the French burned down the town several times. In the 16th century, the people of Seaford were known as the "cormorants" or "shags" because of their enthusiasm for looting ships wrecked in the bay. Local legend has it that Seaford residents would, on occasion, cause ships to run aground by placing fake harbour lights on the cliffs.

Seaford's fortunes revived in the 19th century with the arrival of the railway connecting the town to Lewes and London. It became a small seaside resort town, and more recently a dormitory town for the nearby larger settlements of Eastbourne and Brighton, as well as for London.

The traditional Sussex pronunciation of the name has a full vowel in each syllable: "sea-ford". However, outside Sussex, and increasingly within, it is commonly pronounced with a reduced vowel on the second syllable: .

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 Seaford
• 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.