Cowfold, Sussex

Historical Description

Cowfold, a parish in Sussex, 2 miles E of West Grinstead station on the L.B. & S.C.R., and 6½ WSW of Cuckfield. It has a post, money order, and telegraph office under Horsham. Acreage, 4501; population, 945. The manor is the seat of the Hoper family. The living is a vicarage in the diocese of Chichester; value, £430 with residence. Patron, the Bishop of London. The church is Perpendicular English, with an earlier chancel, and has a magnificent triple-canopied brass of Nelond, prior of Lewes. The building was restored in 1877. St Hugh's monastery is a house of the Carthusian order, erected in 1883. It is a huge building of Sussex stone in the Norman style, and is the largest monastery in England. It includes a church, with a spire 180 feet high, a lay brothers' chapel, and many smaller chapels;, there is also a chapter room, a chapel of relics, refectory, and a very fine library, containing about 12,000 volumes. The whole building covers an area of 10 acres of ground. Ivorys is a chief residence.

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.

Church Records

The Parish Register of Cowfold, Sussex 1588-1812 is available to purchase on CD-ROM from the shop.

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 Cowfold from the following:

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

Maps

Online maps of Cowfold 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