Place:Thakeham, Sussex, England

source: Family History Library Catalog

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

Thakeham is a village and civil parish in the Horsham District of West Sussex, England. The village is situated approximately 18 miles (30 km) northeast from the county town of Chichester; the parish includes the hamlets of Abingworth and Goose Green.

The name Thakeham means "thatched homestead" and the original village had just one main street where the parish church, dedicated to St. Mary, is located. The parish has a land area of 1170.6 hectares (2891 acres or 4.52 sq mi). In the 2001 UK census 1,794 people lived in 684 households. At the 2011 UK Census the population was 1,816.

Most villagers live to the south of the main street. This area is technically the hamlet of Abingworth although few locals know it as anything other than Thakeham.

The map on the page for Thakeham Rural District identified two detached portions of Thakeham parish which are named in the excerpt from Wilson's Gazetteer quoted below. An inspection of the map from the National Library of Scotland collection showed Muttons Farm to the southwest and Spear Hill to the northeast. At least one of these sections was transferred to the parish of Ashington in 1933. (Source:A Vision of Britain Through Time)

The following description from John Marius Wilson's Imperial Gazetteer of England and Wales of 1870-72 is provided by the website A Vision of Britain Through Time (University of Portsmouth Department of Geography).

"THAKEHAM, a village, a parish, and a [registration] district, in Sussex. The village stands on rising ground, 4 miles ESE of Pulborough [railway] station, and 6½ NW of Steyning; and has a fair on Whit-Tuesday. The parish includes Greenhurst hamlet, and the detached tracts of Muttons-Farm and Spear-Hill; and contains the district workhouse.

"Post town: Steyning, under Hurstperpoint. Acres: 2,980. Real property: £3,261. Population: 559. Houses: 97. The living is a rectory in the diocese of Chichester. Value: £710. Patron: the Duke of Norfolk. The church is partly early English."

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 Thakeham
• British History Online. A History of the County of Sussex: Volume 6, Part 2, Bramber Rape: North-western Part, first of a number of chapters on Thakeham
• Maps of the local area are to be found on the page for Arundel Rape and on that for Thakeham Rural District.