Place:South Stoke, Sussex, England

source: Family History Library Catalog

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

South Stoke is a small, almost wholly rural village and civil parish in the Arun District of West Sussex, England. It is centred two miles (3 km) north of Arundel on the west bank of the River Arun and on the edge of Arundel Park. It can be reached by road, footpath or river from Arundel. A footpath also leads to North Stoke on the east bank. The civil parish, which includes the hamlet of Offham (South Stoke), covers an area of 534.86 hectares (1,321.7 acres or 2.07 sq mi). (There is another hamlet named Offham in the parish of Hamsey, Sussex.) At the 2011 Census the population of the village was less than 100 persons and was thus included in count for the neighbouring civil parish of Houghton.

The parish church, Saxon in origin, is dedicated to St Leonard.

Human population here reverted to medieval levels after 1806 when common land was enclosed to make Arundel Park, depriving unlanded villagers of sheep-grazing land. Some of this was returned to woodland after a few centuries of being used as pasture.

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 South Stoke
• British History Online. A History of the County of Sussex: Volume 5, Part 1, Arundel Rape: South-Western Part, Including Arundel, section on South Stoke
• Maps of the local area are to be found on the page for Arundel Rape and on that for East Preston Rural District.