•  Northiam, Sussex

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In 1870-72, John Marius Wilson's Imperial Gazetteer of England and Wales described Northiam like this:

NORTHIAM, a village and a parish in Rye district, Sussex. The village stands 1½ mile S of the river Rotherat the boundary with Kent, 6½ N W by N of Winchelsea r.station, and 7½ N W by W of Rye; and has a post-office‡under Staplehurst, and a fair on the third Thursday of April. ...

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The parish extends to the Rother, and comprises 3, 486 acres. Real property, £6, 540. Pop. 1, 260. Houses, 271. The property is divided among a few. Brickwall House is the seat of T. Frewen, Esq.; was purchased, in 1566, by his ancestor Stephen Frewen, alderman of London, from a family of the name of White, who had long possessed it; is an edifice partly of the time of Elizabeth, partly with additions and decorations of the time of Charles II.; contains some interesting portraits and relics; and was approached, in the time of Elizabeth, by an avenue of its own breadth, a single largeoak of which still stands in front of the house. The father of Stephen Frewen, who purchased the seat, was, for about half a century, rector of the parish; and twobrothers of Stephen became respectively archbishop of York and secretary to Lord-Keeper Coventry. Queen Elizabeth, in 1573, on her way from Hempstead to Rye, dined under an oak, a fragment of which still stands on the village green, adjoining the churchyard; she changed her shoes on that spot, and those she took off are pre-served in Brickwall House; and she got the materials of her dinner from a timbered house which still stands opposite the oak. Dixter, within the parish, is an interesting old timbered house; and Tufton Place, in the neighbourhood, is a large old farm-house, and was the seat of the Tuftons, afterwards Earls of Thanet. A barge of Hastings the Dane, who sailed up the Rother in 893, was found inhumed in the sand and mud of a field in 1822. She was strongly built, measured 65 by 14, and had a forecastle and remains of a cabin; and she contained two jugs, glazed tiles, bricks, broad-toed sandals, a dirk, a board for marking days, and other relics. The living is a rectory in the diocese of Chichester. Value, £800.* Patron, the Rev. J. O. Lord. The church is decorated English, with a Norman tower; has attached to its N side the mausoleum of the Frewens, erected in 1846; and contains two brasses of 1518 and 1538. There are a Wesleyan chapel, an endowed school for 15 scholars, and a national school.

Northiam through time

Northiam is now part of Rother district. Click here for graphs and data of how Rother has changed over two centuries. For statistics about Northiam itself, go to Units and Statistics.

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