Place:West Lavington, Sussex, England

source: Family History Library Catalog

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

West Lavington is a village and civil parish on the edge of Midhurst in the Chichester District of West Sussex, England. Until 1851 West Lavington was a detached portion of the parish of Woolavington which, by 1900, had been renamed East Lavington. In the 2001 census there were 111 households with a total population of 298. At the 2011 Census the population of the civil parish was 276.

The church was constructed in the 1830s for Henry Edward Manning (1808-1892) who was at the time the Anglican rector of Woolavington. Henry Manning was converted to Catholicism and later was Cardinal Manning, Archbishop of Westminster. The church was dedicated to St. Mary Magdalene and the churchyard contains the grave of Richard Cobden (1804-1865) although he lived in the neighbouring parish of Heyshott.

As a result of falling congregations and the church's poor condition, St Mary Magdalene church was closed in September 2008 and the congregation transferred to neighbouring Cocking. The two parishes were subsequently united and are now known as "The Parish of Cocking with West Lavington".

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 West Lavington (Page is labelled as Woolavington.)
• British History Online. A History of the County of Sussex: Volume 4, the Rape of Chichester, section on West Lavington

• Maps of the local area are to be found on the page for Chichester Rape and on that for Midhurst Rural District.