Place:Slindon, Sussex, England

source: Family History Library Catalog

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

Slindon is a mostly rural village and civil parish in the Arun District of West Sussex, England, containing a developed nucleus amid woodland. Much of Slindon's woodland is on the southern edge of the escarpment of the South Downs National Park and belongs to the National Trust. Slindon parish is centred 6 miles (9.7 km) northeast of Chichester.

The parish covers an area of 12.87 km2 (4.97 sq mi) and had a population of 595 in the UK census of 2011.

History

The village is listed in the Domesday Book of 1086 as "Eslindone", the name having the probable meaning in Old English of "sloping hill".

Slindon was one of two "detached" parishes of Aldwick Hundred. The surrounding parishes were all either in Box and Stockbridge Hundred in Chichester Rape or in Avisford Hundred in Arundel Rape.

St Mary's 12th-century parish church contains a memorial to Stephen Langton (c1150–1228), the Archbishop of Canterbury who attended the signing of Magna Carta.

In the Middle Ages Slindon House (now Slindon College) was the site of one of the Archbishop's residences. In 1330 Thomas de Natindon, who was a legal representative of the Pope, was sent there to serve a writ on the archbishop. His party were not well received by the archbishop's servants who stripped and bound them, then threw cold water over them, apparently with the archbishop's consent. Natindon escaped revenge and was pursued over the hills to Petworth where he was caught and held in prison for three days.

The writer Hilaire Belloc (1870–1953) lived in the village.

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 Slindon
• British History Online. A History of the County of Sussex: Volume 4, the Rape of Chichester, section on Slindon
• Maps of the local area are to be found on pages for Aldwick Hundred and Chichester Rape.