Vestry minutes

In general, the minutes contain the following parish business:-

Election of officers; nomination of constables; making the highways, church and poor rates and agreeing on exonerations from payment of rates; examining and agreeing the accounts; some individual rating assessments; deciding the salary of the parish clerk and the rate collector; road repair and the sale of "mould and scrapings" from the roadside.

In particular, the minutes include the following items:-

f.6: agreement concerning the rating of the old Salt Mill at Fishbourne and of the vicarial house, and to levying a rate of one halfpenny to defray the expenses of apprenticing a pauper, 27 February 1843;

f.6a: agreement to repair the lead church roof, and to build a flint wall round part of the churchyard following an order from the Rural Dean to do so, 27 March 1843.

ff.11v, 13, 21v: matters concerning a suit brought against the churchwardens in the Ecclesiastical Court by a parishioner, Robert Bennett in relation to the flint wall; agreement on raising a rate to defray the expenses of defending the case, etc., 3 April, 26 June 1845, 8 November 1847;

f.14: business concerning the valuation of parish property to be returned for the County rate assessment, 5 December 1845;

f.17: business concerning the assessment of the various mills in the parish, 16 April 1846;

ff.17v-43v: [discontinuous] decisions in compliance with an Act to exonerate poor parishioners from the part of assessed tax relating to the keeping of dogs, 29 May 1846 - 28 January 1854;

f.18: decision to take legal proceedings against a parishioner for non-payment of the church rate, 24 August 1846;

ff.25, 35: agreement to reduce the assessment on the portion of the railway running through the parish, 17 February 1849; 7 October 1850;

ff.27v, 30: decisions concerning the wage of labourers employed on parish roads, 20 April, 21 December 1849;

f.28v: agreement that the waywardens should remove the stones put on the public thoroughfare in front of the Berkeley Arms Inn by Robert Bennett, 2 June 1849;

ff.33-35: reports on matters relating to rent charges and the Board of Guardians of the Westbourne Union, 11 May - 7 October 1850;

f.43v: report that the Guardians had agreed, provided the Poor Law Commissioners approved, to receive into the workhouse a certain number of poor children from large families "at the present period of the dearness of food", 28 January 1854;

f.46, 70, 72v, 76: reports on the accounts of the following charities:- Day's Parker's (to be paid into the funds of Bosham National Schools), Elizabeth Nash's and Elizabeth Beasley's Charities, 24 March 1854, 24 March 1860, 25 March 1861, 25 March 1862;

f.49v: agreement to transfer the parish account from the London and County Bank to Gruggen & Co., in Chichester, 16 February 1855;

f.62v-72: [discontinuous] decisions on implementing the Act known as The Nuisances Removal and Diseases Prevention Act by constituting a local authority, 26 February 1859 - 25 March 1861;

f.66: matters concerning the removal of the pound and a site for a new stone pound, 8 September 1859;

f.67v, 68: resolution concerning changes in the overseers' rates scale, 15 March 1860;

f.77: decision to levy a church rate for repairs to the church, restoration of two windows, and provision of a new altar cloth, 21 April 1862