West Lavington, Sussex Genealogy

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

Parish History
LAVINGTON (WEST), a chapelry in Woolavington parish, Sussex; comprising detached portions of the parish near Medhurst railway station. It was constituted in 1851; and its post town is Midhurst.

West Lavington is a village and civil parish on the edge of Midhurst in the Chichester district of West Sussex. West Lavington West Sussex Wikipedia.

West Lavington St Mary Magdalene was formed as an ecclesiastical parish in 1850 from from a chapelry in Woolavington, Sussex  Ancient Parish.

The history of the church is available at Sussex Parish Churches West Lavington St Mary Magdalene

The church of St Mary Magdalene has been designated as a grade II listed building British listed building

West Lavington Sussex Online Parish Clerks (OPC) and St Mary Magdalene

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 Centralised Certificates Office Registration Service West Sussex Record Office County Hall Chichester PO19 1RN Phone: 01243 642122

Church records
West Lavington 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

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