Sussex Village Names – An analysis

Historian Simon Mansfield gives a fascinating talk on the origins of the Saxon names that still persist across the county of Sussex, despite the calamitous effect of the Norman invasion and the centuries that have passed since.

Sussex was originally Suosexe or Suoseaxe, then Suoseaxnaland, meaning the land of the South Saxons. The Saxons, having invaded in 477AD, settled in the lowlands of Sussex and provided names for most of what we see today.

When the Normans invaded in 1066, their manors provided a few new names but the Saxon names were mostly kept and recorded in the Domesday Book by the Normans, although probably not correctly. Simon will take us through some of our village names and examine their origins in detail.