Northiam Sussex Family History Guide

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Northiam is an Ancient Parish in the county of Sussex.

Parish church: 

Parish registers begin:

  • Parish registers: 1558
  • Bishop’s Transcripts: 1606

Nonconformists include: Baptist, General Baptist, and Wesleyan Methodist.

Adjacent Parishes

Parish History

The Imperial Gazetteer of England & Wales 1870

NORTHIAM, a village and a parish in Rye district, Sussex. The village stands 1½ mile S of the river Rother at the boundary with Kent, 6½ NW by N of Winchelsea r. station, and 7½ NW by W of Rye; and has a post-office under Staplehurst, and a fair on the third Thursday of April. The parish extends to the Rother, and comprises 3, 486 acres. Real property, £6, 540. Pop. 1, 260. Houses, 271. The property is divided among a few.

Brickwall House is the seat of T. Frewen, Esq.; was purchased, in 1566, by his ancestor Stephen Frewen, alderman of London, from a family of the name of White, who had long possessed it; is an edifice partly of the time of Elizabeth, partly with additions and decorations of the time of Charles II.; contains some interesting portraits and relics; and was approached, in the time of Elizabeth, by an avenue of its own breadth, a single large oak of which still stands in front of the house. The father of Stephen Frewen, who purchased the seat, was, for about half a century, rector of the parish; and two brothers of Stephen became respectively archbishop of York and secretary to Lord-Keeper Coventry.

Queen Elizabeth, in 1573, on her way from Hempstead to Rye, dined under an oak, a fragment of which still stands on the village green, adjoining the churchyard; she changed her shoes on that spot, and those she took off are pre-served in Brickwall House; and she got the materials of her dinner from a timbered house which still stands opposite the oak. Dixter, within the parish, is an interesting old timbered house; and Tufton Place, in the neighbourhood, is a large old farm-house, and was the seat of the Tuftons, afterwards Earls of Thanet.

A barge of Hastings the Dane, who sailed up the Rother in 893, was found inhumed in the sand and mud of a field in 1822. She was strongly built, measured 65 by 14, and had a forecastle and remains of a cabin; and she contained two jugs, glazed tiles, bricks, broad-toed sandals, a dirk, a board for marking days, and other relics.

The living is a rectory in the diocese of Chichester. Value, £800. Patron, the Rev. J. O. Lord. The church is decorated English, with a Norman tower; has attached to its N side the mausoleum of the Frewens, erected in 1846; and contains two brasses of 1518 and 1538. There are a Wesleyan chapel, an endowed school for 15 scholars, and a national school.

Source: The Imperial Gazetteer of England & Wales [Wilson, John M]. A. Fullarton & Co. N. d. c. [1870-72].

Historical Maps

Vision of Britain Historical Maps – includes topographic maps, boundary maps and land use maps

Administration

  • County: Sussex
  • Civil Registration District: Rye
  • Probate Court: Court of the Bishop (Episcopal Consistory) of Chichester for the Archdeaconry of Lewes
  • Diocese: Chichester
  • Rural Deanery: Dallington
  • Poor Law Union: Rye
  • Hundred: Staple
  • Province: Canterbury