Place:Stanmer, Sussex, England

source: Family History Library Catalog

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

Stanmer is now a small village on the eastern outskirts of Brighton in East Sussex, England. Until the late 19th century Stanmer was a detached parish of Ringmer Hundred in Pevensey Rape. (The remainder of Pevensey Rape is located east of the River Ouse.) In 1984, along with its neighbouring parishes, it became part of the Newhaven Rural District. The village was incorporated into the Municipal Borough of Brighton in 1928.

The village is first recorded in about 765 A.D. when (if the document is authentic) land there was granted by king Ealdwulf of Sussex to Hunlaf in order that he might found a college of secular canons at South Malling near Lewes.

Stanmer was for a long time a closed village ruled by the resident lords of Stanmer, with a population static at just over 100. From the eighteenth century onwards the lords were the Pelham family who received the title Earl of Chichester in 1801 in addition to the Baron Pelham of Stanmer they had had since from 1762. Thomas Pelham (1727-1805) was the 1st Earl of Chichester. The family lived in the mansion called Stanmer House, built in its present Palladian form in 1722, a Grade I listed building. It stands at the centre of Stanmer Park, landscaped by Humphry Repton, which was awarded Grade II "park of special historic interest" status by English Heritage in 1983. In 1960 the eastern portion of the park was became the University of Sussex.

Stanmer Church, with a narrow spire unusual in Sussex downland, is adjacent to Stanmer House. Its historic dedication is unknown. It was built in 1838 on the site of a 14th-century predecessor destroyed by fire.

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