[ElizabethHerts]

We went to West Sussex last week and visited the Record Office in Chichester.

We also visited some of the parish churches, and re-visited Cocking. However, the Andrew family originally came from the nearby parish of Bepton, with my earliest found ancestor being my 11x-great-grandfather John Andrew who died in Bepton in 1577 and left a will.

Inside the church at Bepton is a wall plaque that says:

"Mr Nicholas Andrew
who died Decr 1st, 1817 Aged 65,
bequeathed by his will the
Sum of £50 to erect this Gallery
as a token of his Regard for
the Parish of Bepton, in which
his Family, of whom he was the
last male heir, had resided for
500 Years."

So if this was written in 1817 he knew that the Andrew family had been in Bepton parish since the 1300s! I can trace them back to the early 1500s through wills (the PRs are pretty useless as they only start in the 1700s, apart from very patchy BTs).