West Wittering, Sussex Genealogy

Guide to West Wittering, Sussex ancestry, family history, and genealogy: parish registers, transcripts, census records, birth records, marriage records, and death records.

Parish History
WITTERING, WEST, a parish, in the union of West Hampnett, hundred of Manhood, rape of Chichester, West division of Sussex,seven and a half miles South West from Chichester. The parish is bounded on the south by the English Channel, and on the west by the mouth of Chichester harbour. The church is an ancient edifice combining various periods of English architecture, with a tower on the north side, and contains some specimens of oak carving in the pews, and three stalls. It has also a very fine Norman font of cylindrical form, and a monument of Caen stone, with effigies of William Ernley and family richly sculptured in bas-relief, and carved representations of the Resurrection and the Salutation of the Virgin.

West Wittering is a village and civil parish on the Manhood peninsula in the Chichester district of West Sussex. The neighbouring parish on the county boundary is South Hayling, Hampshire across the mouth of Chichester Harbour.

West Wittering St Peter and St Paul is an Ancient Parish; the history of the church is available at Sussex Parish Churches West Wittering St Peter and St Paul.

The parish church of St Peter and St Paul has been designated a grade I listed building British listed building

Wittering Sussex Online Parish Clerks (OPC) and St Peter and St Paul

Other places of worship include

Bethesda Methodist Chapel which dates from 1841 West Wittering Methodist Chapel

Civil Registration
Birth, marriages and deaths were kept by the government, from July 1837 to the present day. The civil registration article tells more about these records. There are several Internet sites with name lists or indexes. A popular site is FreeBMD.

Church records
West Wittering parish registers of christenings, marriages and burials are available online for the following years:

To find the names of the neighboring parishes, use England Jurisdictions 1851 Map. In this site, search for the name of the parish, click on the location "pin", click Options and click List contiguous parishes.

Records are also available at the West Sussex Record Office and The Keep (which houses the collections of the East Sussex Record Office).

Probate records
Records of wills, administrations, inventories, indexes, etc. were filed by the court with jurisdiction over this parish. Go to Sussex Probate Records to find the name of the court having primary jurisdiction. Scroll down in the article to the section Court Jurisdictions by Parish.

Maps and Gazetteers
Maps are a visual look at the locations in England. Gazetteers contain brief summaries about a place.


 * England Jurisdictions 1851
 * Vision of Britain

Websites
http://www.genuki.org.uk/big/eng/SSX/WestWittering/