AMBERSHAM MANOR

Identity: confirmed — The registry record is identified with the historic Ambersham manor associated with Easebourne and South Ambersham in West Sussex. The supplied court-roll, survey and rental references belong to the Cowdray-related manorial archive, while historical sources confirm Ambersham as a distinct manor later divided into North and South Ambersham. The Easebourne registry location is consistent with the South Ambersham portion, which was historically attached to Easebourne for ecclesiastical and administrative purposes.
Representative point: 50.9782, -0.6959
Basis: supported_manorial_centre — Ambersham House in South Ambersham is a documented historic house within the Ambersham manorial locality and provides the best defensible surviving geographic proxy for the Easebourne-associated manor. Historic England identifies the building at NGR SU 91650 20674; the evidence does not prove that the present listed house was the formal medieval manor house.
Point confidence: medium
Boundary status: representative_point_only
Boundary period: Medieval to early modern; exact period not established
Boundary confidence: none
Boundary basis: The evidence establishes the manor's location and historical relationship with South Ambersham, East Meon and Easebourne, but does not provide a sufficiently explicit manor map, metes-and-bounds description or parcel reconstruction for the territorial extent of this exact registry manor. The recorded area of South Ambersham in nineteenth-century directories is a territorial/administrative description and cannot safely be substituted for the manorial boundary. Ambersham was historically divided into North and South portions, further complicating any reconstruction.
Sources:
- The National Archives: Ambersham Manor, F255155: https://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/c/F255155 — Registry authority record for the exact manor entry supplied; associated with Easebourne, Sussex.
- The National Archives: Ambersham Manor survey, Cowdray 306 ff.34-40, 1568: https://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/r/N14707417 — Manorial survey reference supplied for the Ambersham record and held in the Cowdray collection at West Sussex Record Office.
- The National Trust: Archaeological and Historic Landscape Survey: https://heritagerecords.nationaltrust.org.uk/LibraryLinkWS/LLFiles/177279/original_177279.pdf — Summarises Ambersham's medieval history, its development as a manor, and its division into North and South Ambersham; identifies the complex relationship with East Meon and later estates.
- Historic England: Ambersham House, NHLE 1025970: https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1025970 — Provides the documented location of Ambersham House in South Ambersham at NGR SU 91650 20674, used as the representative geographic point.
- Kelly's Directory: Easebourne with South Ambersham: https://www.dands.uk/ssx1867/easebourne1867/ — Confirms South Ambersham's adjacency to Easebourne and its historical association with the Easebourne locality; states that the Earl of Egmont was lord of the manor and landowner in the nineteenth century.
- Feet of Fines, CP 25/1/294/80, number 93: https://www.medievalgenealogy.org.uk/fines/abstracts/CP_25_1_294_80.shtml — Historical legal record showing Ambersham holdings in both Sussex and Hampshire and recording the manor's connection with Easebourne, Fernhurst and East Meon.
Warnings / uncertainty:
- Ambersham was historically divided into North and South Ambersham; the supplied registry location at Easebourne most strongly indicates the South Ambersham-associated record, but the surviving web evidence does not expose the full manorial court-roll or survey contents.
- Ambersham House is used as a supported locality/manorial-centre proxy, not asserted as the proven medieval manor house.
- No historical manor boundary polygon was returned because available evidence does not distinguish the manorial extent from the wider tything, parish, estate or later administrative areas.