Flimwell, Sussex
Historical Description
Flimwell, a hamlet in Ticehurst parish, and an ecclesiastical parish formed in 1839 from the parishes of Ticehurst, Etchingham, and Hawkhurst, Sussex, 5 miles from Etching-ham, and 3 from Hawkhurst stations on the S.E.R, There is a post and money order office under Hawkhurst; telegraph office, Ticehurst. Population, 724. The living is a vicarage in the diocese of Chichester; gross value, £280 with residence. Patron, the Bishop of Chichester. The church is a stone building in the Perpendicular style with a spire. There is a Calvinistic chapel, Flinchamstede. See FINCHAMSTEAD, Flint, a market-town, a municipal and contributory parliamentary boroughy the head of a county court district, and a parochial chapelry in Flintshire. The town stands on the estuary of .the Dee at the ferry to Parkgate, 12½ miles NW of Chester, and 193 distant from London. It has a station on the L. & N.W.R., and a head post office. It is thought by some antiquaries to occupy the site of a Roman station, or at least to have had some fortress at a very early period, but it first comes into distinct notice in connection with a castle begun by Henry II. and finished by Edward I., and it probably got its name either from some early manufacture of flint glass or from the abundance of siliceous rock in its neighbourhood. It gives name to the county, and was originally the county town, but, as respects at least the seat of assizes, it has been superseded by Mold. The town-hall Is a handsome modern edifice. The church was built in 1848 on the site of a previous one. The castle stands on a low freestone rock, washed by the Dee, and was originally united to the town by a drawbridge. It was the meeting-place of Edward II. with Piers Gaveston, was taken by Llewelyn, was given by Edward III. to the Black Prince; passed to the De Veres and the Eiarl of Northumberland; was the place of the betrayal of Richard II. to Bolingbroke, and in that connection has been immortalized by Shakespeare; was garrisoned for Charles I. by Sir Roger Mostyn; suffered capture after a long siege by Sir W. Brereton; was retaken for the king and captured again by General Mytton, and was dismantled by order of parliament in 1647. It forms a square court with large round towers at the angles; one of the towers is considerably larger than the others, and is called the double tower, forming a keep, detached from the main building, but structurally communicating with it by a drawbridge. This keep probably got its name from having concentric walls with intermediate gallery opening into a central area of fully 22 feet in diameter, and is by far the most interesting portion of the existing ruin. The castle as a whole has a crumbling aspect, and now wants portions of towers and walls, which have been undermined by the sea; yet it retains enough both of bulk and character to make it an instructive specimen of the architecture of its age, and to show that its military strength was not small. The town had once considerable commerce, but lost great part of it by the gradual silting up of the estuary, and it once had also considerable inland trade, but lost much of this by the removal of the county business to Mold. Yet, in consequence of the establishment of large alkali and smelting works and paper mills, it has undergone considerable revival. A weekly market is held on Saturday, and a fair on the first Saturday in the month. The town was made a borough by Edward I., is governed by a mayor, 4 aldermen, and 12 councillors, and unites with St Asaph, Caergwrle, Caerwys, Holywell, Mold, Overton, and Rhuddlan in sending a member to parliament. It is a seat of petty sessions and has a commission of the peace. The township comprises 1608 acres with 1260 of adjacent tidal water and foreshore; population, 4925. The municipal borough comprises 3334 acres; population, 5247. Population of the parliamentary borough, 5291; of the chapelry, 5258. A famous ancient cross, the shaft of which still exists, stood at Croes Ati, about a mile from the town on the lower road to Chester, and some interesting Roman antiquities, lead scorise, and traces of furnaces have been found there. The living is a rectory in the diocese of St Asaph; gross value, £363 with residence. Patron, the Bishop of St Asaph.
Maps
Online maps of Flimwell 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: