Chichester St Peter the Less, Sussex Genealogy

Guide to Chichester St Peter the Less, Sussex ancestry, family history, and genealogy: parish registers, transcripts, census records, birth records, marriage records, and death records.

Parish History
CHICHESTER, a city and market-town, having exclusive jurisdiction, locally in the hundred of Box and Stockbridge, rape of Chichester, W. division of Sussex, 62 miles (S. W. by S.) from London. Chichester comprises the parishes of All Saints, or the Pallant or Palatinate, containing 327 inhabitants; St. Andrew, 625; St. Martin, 282; St. Olave, 238; St. Pancras, partly within and partly without the walls, 1065; St. Peter the Great, or the Subdeanery, 5021; St. Peter the Less, 349; and St. Bartholomew Without, 297; with the precinct of the Cathedral Close, 145. These parishes were, by act of parliament in 1753, united for the better maintenance of the poor, under the inspection of guardians. There are also an extra-parochial district called Newton, formerly the Black friars, containing 123 persons; and a small extra-parochial plot beyond the walls, called St. James', and containing 40 inhabitants. There are places of worship in the city for the Society of Friends, Huntingtonians, Independents, Wesleyans, and Unitarians. Chichester St Peter the Less was an Ancient Parish.

The church was on the east side of North Street dated from the 13th century and was restored in the 19th century See 'Chichester: Churches (Anglican)', A History of the County of Sussex: Volume 3 (1935), pp. 160-164. here

After the failure of a plan in 1851-1852 to rebuild the church restoration in 1861-1862 and 1879-1880 but the church was finally demolished in 1960.

Church history Chichester St Peter the Less

Chichester Sussex Online Parish Clerks(OPC)

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 Chichester 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
parish registers of christenings, marriages and burials are available online for the following years:

CHICHESTER St. Peter the Less records held at West Sussex Record Office Bap 1680-1949 Marr 1680-1949 Bur 1680-1932 Bishop’s transcripts 1591-1899

Link to the FamilySearch Catalogue showing the film numbers in their collection

Census Records
See Sussex Census

Poor Law Unions
Chichester 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