Place:Falmer, Sussex, England

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source: Family History Library Catalog

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

Falmer is a small village but larger civil parish now within the Lewes District of East Sussex, England, lying between Brighton and Lewes, approximately five miles (8km) northeast of the former.

The village is divided by the A27 major road. North of the dual carriageway are a few houses and a pub, with a footbridge linking to the southern part of the village, where a large pond is encircled by cottages and the parish church, dedicated to St. Lawrence. The two halves of the village are also linked by a road bridge just outside this circle of houses. The village pond, home to a population of ducks and geese, accounts for the name of the village: Old English for 'fallow (pale-coloured) pond' (though the reason for this precise choice of colour-term is unclear nowadays).

The Keep—East Sussex County Council's new archive and record office, which opened in 2013—is near the village.

The original manor of Falmer existed before the Norman conquest of England (1066) and was held by Wilton Abbey in Wiltshire. In 1628 or 1629 Charles I granted the manor to Edward Ditchfield who sold it to William Craven (1608–1697), who lost it because of his support of the King during the English Civil War (1640s). Wikipedia does not follow the ownership of the manor beyond this point.

Due to the proximity of Falmer to the present-day city of Brighton and Hove, the parish has been substantially affected by the twentieth-century development in the area. Since the 1960s it has been home to the University of Sussex campus, and in the 1990s, the former Falmer campus of Brighton Polytechnic became a principal base of the University of Brighton.

Despite its proximity to Brighton, Falmer is part of the Lewes District of East Sussex and was before 1974 part of the Chailey Rural District. The parish has an area of 17.0 km2 (6.6 sq mi) and in the UK census of 2011 its permanent population (excluding university campuses) numbered 284.

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 Falmer
• British History Online. A History of the County of Sussex: Volume 7, Lewes Hundred, section on Falmer
• Maps of the local area are to be found on the WeRelate page for Lewes Rape and on that for Newhaven Rural District.