Fernhurst, Sussex

FARNHURST (or FERNHURST) is a parish, in the Western division of the county, Easebourne hundred, Midhurst union, county court district and rural deanery, Chichester rape, diocese and archdeaconry, about 3 miles south from Haslemere, Surrey, on the road to Chichester. The church has a nave and chancel, south aisle, a shingled spire, and is built in the Early English style. The register commences in 1547. The living is a perpetual curacy, value £111 per annum, with residence, in the gift of the Earl of Egmont, and held by the Rev. Edmund Harwick Marriott. The manor is not mentioned in the "Domesday Survey," but is referred to in the grants made to Sir William Fitzwilliam in the reign of Henry VIII., from which time it has descended as part of Cowdry, belonging from time to time to the respective owners of that domain. The Earl of Egmont is lord of the manor. Area, 4,757 acres; the population in 1861 was 769.
North Ambersham.- This, though now a tithing of Farnhurst, was originally a hamlet of the parish of Steep, in Hampshire. By the operation of the Act (7 & 8 Vict. cap. 61), known as the "County Boundaries Act," the narrow strip of land in which this and the hamlet of South Ambersham, running directly from the county of Hants into that of Sussex, were detached from the former and annexed to the latter. For ecclesiastical purposes this hamlet was attached to Farnhurst, and South Ambersham to Easebourne, and in all respects it is treated as entirely disconnected from the mother parish, except that tithes are still paid to Steep. The population in 1861 was 111.

[Kelly's Post Office Directory of Essex, Herts, Middlesex, Kent, Surrey and Sussex, 1867.]