Place:Up Marden, Sussex, England

source: Family History Library Catalog

Up Marden was a very small parish located on the spur of the South Downs in an area which is now part of the Chichester District of West Sussex. It is 7 miles (11 km) northwest of Chichester, close to East Marden and North Marden. In 1933, under a County Review Order, Up Marden was united with the neighbouring parish of Compton along with parts of East Marden and Stoughton.

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).

"MARDEN-UP, or UPMARDEN, a parish in Westbourne [registration] district, Sussex; 7 miles SW of Midhurst [railway] station. It includes the tything of West Marden; which has a post office under Emsworth [Hampshire]. Acres: 2,928. Real property: £2,060. Population: 366. Houses: 66. The manor is one of the four Meredens [Mardens] mentioned in Domesday book; has always been united with Compton manor; and belongs now to Admiral Sir Phipps Hornby. The living is a vicarage, annexed to the vicarage of Compton, in the diocese of Chichester. The church is ancient."

For more information, see the EN Wikipedia article Up Marden. This is quite a long article given the size of the parish.

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.

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