Cocking, Sussex Genealogy

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

Parish History
COCKING, a parish, in the union of Midhurst, hundred of Easebourne, rape of Chichester, W. division of Sussex, 2½ miles (S.) from Midhurst.

Cocking is an Ancient Parish in West Sussex three miles south of Midhurst and includes Cocking Hill and Cocking Causeway.

The church history at Cocking has no dedicatory name however English Heritage have designated the church as a grade I listed building as the Church of St Mary British listed building

The Bishop's Transcripts contain no dedicatory name and the Parish magazine adopts the dedicatory name St Catherine of Siena for the modern parish of Cocking with West Lavington. This is not reflected in the parish legal name Cocking Parish suggesting a recent modern dedication.

Cocking Sussex Online Parish Clerks(OPC)

See also Cocking Wikipedia

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.

From 1837 the history of civil registration can be found at Midhurst registration district Certificates can be ordered from West Sussex Centralized Certificates Office Registration Service West Sussex Record Office County Hall Chichester PO19 1RN Phone: 01243 642122

Church records
Cocking 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).

Census records
The 1851 census of England and Wales attempted to identify religious places of worship in addition to the household survey census returns.

Poor Law Unions
Midhurst Poor Law Union, Sussex

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