Place:Slinfold, Sussex, England

source: Family History Library Catalog

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

Slinfold is a village and civil parish in the Horsham District of West Sussex, England. The village is almost 4 miles (6.4 km) west of Horsham, just off the A29 road. Slinfold is the source of the western River Adur, which flows to the English Channel at Shoreham by Sea.

The parish covers 1,694 hectares (4,186 acres or 6.54sq mi). The 2001 UK Census recorded a population of 1,647 people living in 627 households. By the 2011 UK census the population had increased to 2,055.

There are two manors in Slinfold. One is Dedisham, 1 mile (1.6 km) northeast of the village, in existence since at least 1271, when Henry III granted the then occupier a licence to crenellate the manor house on the site. The present house appears to date from the 16th or 17th century. Slinfold Manor, 1.5 miles (2.4 km) south of the village, is a Georgian house built late in the 18th century.

The Church of England parish church of Saint Peter was designed by the Gothic Revival architect Benjamin Ferrey in a late 13th-century style and built in 1861 on the site of the original medieval parish church.

Slinfold railway station on the Cranleigh Line was opened in 1865 and closed in 1965. The trackbed of the line now forms part of the Downs Link Bridleway. The route of the former Roman road linking London and Chichester passes through the parish and a Roman posting station existed at Alfoldean.

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 Slinfold
• British History Online. A History of the County of Sussex does not cover the East and West Easwrith Hundreds.
• Maps of the local area are to be found on the page for Arundel Rape and on that for Horsham Rural District.