Ripe, Sussex Genealogy

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

Parish History
RIPE, or Eckington (St. John the Baptist), a parish, in the union of West Firle, hundred of Shiplake, rape of Pevensey, E. division of Sussex, 10 miles (S. S. E.) from Uckfield. The church is a handsome structure, partly in the early and partly in the decorated English style, with an embattled tower; the east window is ornamented with stained glass collected from the other windows of the edifice. Here is a powerful chalybeate spring.

The church history is found at Ripe

The Parish Church of St John the Baptist has been designated as a grade I listed building British listed building

Ripe Sussex Online Parish Clerks(OPC)

See also Chalvington with Ripe Wikipedia and list of places to worship in Wealden 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 this parish was in Lewes Registration District Certificates may be obtained from East Sussex The Register Office Town Hall Grove Road Eastbourne BN21 4UG Phone: 01323 464780 Fax: 01323 431386 Email:eastbourne.registrar@eastsussex.gov.uk

Church records
Ripe 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
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
West Firle 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/Ripe/