Preston Manor of Bishop of Chichester (The Gatehouse Record)

In the civil parish of Brighton.
In the historic county of Sussex.
Modern Authority of Brighton and Hove; City of.
1974 county of East Sussex.
Medieval County of Sussex (Rape of Lewes).

OS Map Grid Reference: TQ30320640
Latitude 50.84246° Longitude -0.15039°

Preston Manor of Bishop of Chichester has been described as a certain Palace, and also as a probable Fortified Manor House.

There are no visible remains.

This is a Grade 2* listed building protected by law*.

Description

Residential manor of the Bishop of Chichester. (Thompson)

Preston Manor is largely a 1738 rebuilding with C19/20 additions, but the ground floor incorporates remains of an earlier building including two originally external square-headed stone Jacobean doorways with moulded architraves. Of two round-headed 'interior doorways one is of late date, the other, with a moulded stone surround, may be of C13 date and in situ. Building survey in 1999 carried out by Archaeology South East recorded that the earliest recognizable fabric was c1600 and little of this survived the early C18 rebuild. However it is likely that due to its position adjacent to the church this was the site of the medieval manor. (East Sussex HER)

A Royal licence to crenellate was granted in 1447 Oct 28 (Click on the date for details of this licence.).

Sources of information, references and further reading

National Heritage List for England Listed Building number(s) 1380750
Historic England (PastScape) Defra or Monument number(s) 401966.
County Historic Environment Record (or Sites and Monuments Record) number(s) MES308.

Websites (Gatehouse is not responsible for the content of external websites.)
- Royal Pavilion, Museums and Libraries
  Wikipedia entry
Books
- Emery, Anthony, 2006, Greater Medieval Houses of England and Wales Vol. 3 Southern England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press) p. 440
  Thompson, M.W., 1998, Medieval bishops' houses in England and Wales (Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing) p. 168, 173
Primary (Medieval documents or transcriptions of such documents - This section is far from complete and the secondary sources should be consulted for full references.)
- Maxwell Lyte, H.C. (ed), 1927, Calendar of Charter Rolls 5 Henry VI - 8 Henry VIII, AD 1427-1516, with an appendix, 1215-1288 Vol. 6. (HMSO) p. 94-5 online copy
Other sources: Theses; 'grey' literature; in-house reports; unpublished works; etc.
- Payne, Naomi, 2003, The medieval residences of the bishops of Bath and Wells, and Salisbury (PhD Thesis University of Bristol) Appendix B: List of Medieval Bishop's Palaces in England and Wales (available via EThOS)

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The information on this web page may be derived from information compiled by and/or copyright of Historic England, County Historic Environment Records and other individuals and organisations. It may also contain information licensed under the Open Government Licence. All the sources given should be consulted to identify the original copyright holder and permission obtained from them before use of the information on this site for commercial purposes.
The author and compiler of Gatehouse does not receive any income from the site and funds it himself. The information within this site is provided freely for educational purposes only.

The bibliography owes much to various bibliographies produced by John Kenyon for the Council for British Archaeology, the Castle Studies Group and others.

Suggestions for finding online and/or hard copies of bibliographical sources can be seen at this link.
Minor archaeological investigations, such as watching brief reports, and some other 'grey' literature is most likely to be held by H.E.R.s but is often poorly referenced and is unlikely to be recorded here, or elsewhere, but some suggestions can be found here.

The possible site or monument is represented on maps as a point location. This is a guide only. It should be noted that OS grid references defines an area, not a point location. In practice this means the actual center of the site or monument may often, but not always, be to the North East of the point shown. Locations derived from OS grid references and from latitude longitiude may differ by a small distance.
Further information on mapping and location can be seen at this link.

Please help to make this as useful a resource as possible by contacting Gatehouse if you see errors, can add information or have suggestions for improvements in functality and design.
Help is acknowledged.

*The listed building may not be the actual medieval building, but a building on the site of, or incorporating fragments of, the described site.

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