Bramber, Sussex

Historical Description

Bramber, a village and a parish in Sussex. The village stands on the river Adur, and on the Roman road from Dover to Winchester, and has a station on the L.B. & S.C.R., 54 miles from London. It consists now of only a few cottages, but it was long a place of importance and a market-town. It was known to the Saxons as Brymmburgh, signifying " a fortified hill" and it was a borough by prescription, and sent two members to parliament till disfranchised by the act of 1832. One of its representatives for a time was the famous Wilberforce. The parish includes the village, and is in the district of Steyning. Post town, Brighton; money order office, Upper Beeding; telegraph office, Bramber. Acreage, 851; population of the civil parish, 169; of the ecclesiastical, including Buttolphs, 239. The manor belonged before the Conquest to the Saxon kings; was given by the Conqueror to William de Braose; passed to the Howards, and belongs now to the Duke of Norfolk. A Roman castellum seems to have been here, and remains of a Roman bridge have been observed. A Saxon royal fort succeeded. The castellum; a Norman keep was added to the fort, and a great baronial castle arose out of these, a moated, irregular parallelogram, 560 feet by 280, and was held by the Parliamentarian troops during the Civil War, and went soon afterwards into decay. Little of it now remains except a fragment of a lofty barbican tower, and a mound representing the keep. The tower has a Norman window, and the mound commands an extensive and very striking view. The living is a rectory, united with the vicarage of Buttolphs, in the diocese of Chichester; joint net value, £149. Patron, Magdalen College, Oxford. The church stands close to the castle, shows some Norman features, and once was cruciform, with a central tower. It was restored in 1870. There is a small ornithological museum in the village.

Administration

The following is a list of the administrative units in which this place was either wholly or partly included.

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 Bramber from the following:

• Samuel Lewis' A Topographical Dictionary of England, by Samuel Lewis, seventh edition, published 1858. (Bramber (St. Nicholas))

Maps

Online maps of Bramber 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:

• Mid Sussex Times
• Chichester Express and West Sussex Journal
• Sussex Agricultural Express
• Hastings and St Leonards Observer
• Sussex Advertiser
• Brighton Gazette
• Bexhill-on-Sea Observer