East Preston, Sussex Genealogy

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

Parish History
WITTERING, EAST, a parish, in the union of West Hampnett, hundred of Manhood, rape of Chichester, W. division of Sussex, 6 miles (S. W. by S.) from Chichester.

East Preston St Mary is an Ancient Parish in the Arun district of West Sussex.

history and images

The parish church of St Mary has been designated a grade I listed building British Listed building

East Preston Sussex Online Parish Clerks(OPC)

List of places of worship in Arun

See: A Topographical Dictionary of England (1848), pp. 609-616. here

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 this parish was in the Worthing registration district which was abolished in 1870 and recreated in 1935 Certificates can be ordered from West Sussex Centralised Certificates Office Registration Service West Sussex Record Office County Hall Chichester PO19 1RN Phone: 01243 642122

Church records
East Preston 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).

Poor Law Unions
East Preston Poor Law Union, Sussex

Sutton (East Preston) 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