Balcombe, Sussex
Historical Description
Balcombe, a village and a parish in Sussex. The village stands in a pleasant spot, with a station on the L.B. & S.C.B., 34 miles from London. There is a post and money order office; the telegraph office is at the station. The parish comprises 4795 acres, of which 1180 are in Highbeach warren; population, 977. Balcombe Place (the seat of the Hankcy family) and Forest Farm are elegant mansions. A tunnel of the railway, 1139½ yards long, goes through a hill within the parish, and the Ouse viaduct, 100 feet high, and upwards of a ½ of a mile long, with 37 arches of 30 feet each in span, is about 1½ mile from the station. The living is a rectory in the diocese of Chichester; net value, £329 with residence. The church is Early English in part, and very good; it was restored in 1873. There are several chalybeate springs in the neighbourhood.
Administration
The following is a list of the administrative units in which this place was either wholly or partly included.
| Ancient County | Sussex | |
| Ecclesiastical parish | Balcomb St. Mary | |
| Hundred | Street | |
| Poor Law union | Cuckfield |
Any dates in this table should be used as a guide only.
Civil Registration
For general information about Civil Registration (births, marriages and deaths) see the Civil Registration page.
Directories & Gazetteers
We have transcribed the entry for Balcombe from the following:
- Samuel Lewis' A Topographical Dictionary of England, by Samuel Lewis, seventh edition, published 1858. (Balcomb (St. Mary))
Maps
Online maps of Balcombe are available from a number of sites:
- Bing (Current Ordnance Survey maps).
- Google Streetview.
- National Library of Scotland. (Old maps)
- OpenStreetMap.
- old-maps.co.uk (Old Ordnance Survey maps to buy).
- Streetmap.co.uk (Current Ordnance Survey maps).
- A Vision of Britain through Time. (Old maps)
Newspapers and Periodicals
The British Newspaper Archive have fully searchable digitised copies of the following Sussex newspapers online: