Fernhurst, Sussex

Historical Description

Farnhurst or Fernhurst, a parish in Sussex, 3½ miles S by W of Haslemere station on the L. & S.W.R., and 4½ N by E of Midhurst. It has a post, money order, and telegraph office (S.O.) Acreage, 4950; population of the civil parish, 1133; of the ecclesiastical, 1249. By the Divided Parishes Act the tithing of North Ambersham was annexed in 1881, and a detached portion of Linchmere to Farnhurst. The scenery in the S is wild and various, and a very fine view is obtained at Henley Hill. The living is a vicarage in the diocese of Chichester; gross value, £150 with residence. Patron, the Earl of Egroont. The church is Early English and good, and has a single spire; it was restored in 1881. There are a Wesleyan chapel and a workmen's institute, Farningham, a village and a parish in Kent. The village stands on the river Darent, in a fine valley between ridges of chalk hills, has a station on the L.C. & D.R., 21 miles from London, and 4½ S of Dartford, was known at Domesday as Ferlingeham, and was once a market-town. It has a post, money order, and telegraph office under Dartford, a hotel, a four-arched bridge across the Darent, a monthly cattle market, and a fair on 15 Oct. The parish comprises 2739 acres; population, 879. There were formerly paper mills. The living is a vicarage in the diocese of Canterbury; gross value, £255 with residence. Patron, the Archbishop of Canterbury. The church is chiefly Early English, with a Later English tower, and has an octagonal, figured, Later English font, a brass of a vicar of 1451, and four other brasses. It was thoroughly restored in 1871. There is a Wesleyan chapel. Roper's charity, shared also by other places, and other charities have £270.

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.

Directories & Gazetteers

We have transcribed the entry for Fernhurst from the following:

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

Maps

Online maps of Fernhurst 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