Wilmington, Sussex

Historical Description

Wilmington, a parish, with a village, in Sussex, 2½ miles S of Berwick station on the L.B. & S.C.R., and 6 NW of Eastbourne. It has a post office under Polegate; money order and telegraph office, Polegate. Acreage, 1587; population of the civil parish, 274; of the ecclesiastical, 277. There is a parish council consisting of five members. It gives the title of Baron to the Marquis of Northampton. A Benedictine priory, a cell to Grestein Abbey in Normandy, was founded here in the time of William Rufus by the Earl of Mortaigne, and was given by Henry V. to Chichester Cathedral. There is a figure of a man roughly cut in the turf on the side of the chalk downs, and is called the Green or Long Man of Wilmington. The living is a vicarage in the diocese of Chichester; net value, £87 with residence. Patron, the Duke of Devonshire. The church has Norman portions, and is good.

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 Wilmington from the following:

• Samuel Lewis' A Topographical Dictionary of England, by Samuel Lewis, seventh edition, published 1858. (Wilmington (St. Mary and St. Peter))

Maps

Online maps of Wilmington 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