Clayton, Sussex

Historical Description

Clayton, a parish in Sussex, 1 mile S of Hassocks station on the L.B. & S.C.R., and 2 miles SE of Hurstpierpoint. It has a post office under Hassocks (R.S.O.); money order and telegraph office, Hassocks. Acreage, 2459; population of the civil parish, 1966; of the ecclesiastical, 1398. Clayton Priory is the seat of the Patton-Bethune family. A tunnel of the railway through the South Downs, 1½ mile long, commences a short distance south of the church, and was formed at a cost of upwards of £90,000. The living is a rectory, united with the rectory of Keymer, in the diocese of Chi-chester; net value, about £400. Patron, Brazenose College, Oxford. The old church is Early English, with a round chancel-arch of quasi-Saxon character. A new church was built in 1863, at St John's Common, in the parish of Keymer, at a cost of £6000, is in the Decorated Englisli style and cruciform, and the charge of it is a separate vicarage, in the patronage of the rector.

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 Clayton from the following:

• Samuel Lewis' A Topographical Dictionary of England, by Samuel Lewis, seventh edition, published 1858. (Clayton (St. John the Baptist))

Maps

Online maps of Clayton 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