Preston, Sussex Genealogy

England   Sussex     Sussex Parishes

Parish History
PRESTON (St. Peter), a parish, in the union of Steyning, hundred of Preston, rape of Lewes, E. division of Sussex, 1¾ mile (N. N. W.) from Brighton. The London and Brighton and the Lewes and Brighton railways pass through the parish. In the parish are cavalry barracks, and the water-works for supplying Brighton. The church is in the early English style, with a square embattled tower: on the eastern wall were discovered, a few years since, some ancient paintings, ascertained to be of the time of Edward I.

Preston St Peter is an Ancient parish in the village of Preston which is now part of the city of Brighton and Hove East Sussex. The church of St Peter is adjacent to Preston Manor Wikipedia and is now a redundant Anglican church St Peter's Church Preston Village Brighton Wikipedia which is in the care of the Churches Conservation Trust having been declared redundant in 1990 by the Diocese of Chichester. The Church has been designated as a grade II* listed building.British listed building

Preston Sussex Online Parish Clerks(OPC)

The parish church of Preston is Preston St John the Evangelist St John the Evangelist Church Preston Village Wikipedia and has been designated as a grade II listed building.British listed building

Preston St John the Evangelist Sussex Online Parish Clerks(OPC)

other places of worship in Preston include

Calvary Evangelical Church Clermont Congregational Church Clermont United Reformed Church Elim Pentecostal Church Florence Road Baptist Church Our Lady of Lourdes Convent Chapel Preston Park Methodist Church St Augustine Anglican Church Preston Sussex Online Parish Clerks (OPC) St Mary Roman Catholic Church Preston Sussex Online Parish Clerks (OPC) St Saviour Anglican Church Preston Sussex Online Parish Clerks (OPC) Stanford Avenue Methodist Church

From this parish were formed

Preston St Matthias Sussex Online Parish Clerks (OPC)

St Richard Hollingdean Sussex Online Parish Clerks (OPC)

See also list of places to worship in Brighton and Hove

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 Steyning Registration District until the 1935 reorganisation of registration services 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
parish registers of christenings, marriages and burials are available online for the following years:

Link to the Family History Library Catalogue showing the film numbers in their collection

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

Prior to the 1911 census the household schedule was destroyed and only the enumerator's schedule survives.

The 1911 census of England and Wales was taken on the night of Sunday 2 April 1911 and in addition to households and institutions such as prisons and workhouses, canal boats merchant ships and naval vessels it attempted to include homeless persons. The schedule was completed by an individual and for the first time both this record and the enumerator's schedule were preserved. Two forms of boycott of the census by women are possible due to frustration at government failure to grant women the universal right to vote in parliamentary and local elections. The schedule either records a protest by failure to complete the form in respect of the women in the household or women are absent due to organization of groups of women staying away from home for the whole night. Research estimates that several thousand women are not found by census search.

Poor Law Unions
Steyning 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