A Mr. Francis Leeson of the Fellow of the Society of Genealogist of Ferring Sussex believes the name FILTNESS was WYLDENYSSHE in its medieval form For example he found in some LAY SUBSIDY LISTS-1296- WILLIAM   LE   WYLDENYSSHE  & ISABELL  LA WHYDENYSSHE.

The use of La and Le indicate a French Origin. There is now a farm called WILDERNESS FARM at Hadlow near Buxton, Sussex, which appears in the 1547 Court Rolls as WYLDERNESSE.

What is certain is that JOHN WYLTNESS who made a will in 1555 (East Sussex Records Office Ref:215) is named in the parish Register as JOHN FILTNESS.

I have extracted the following snippets from the book called,

“ROTHERFIELD.” The story of some “WEALDEN MANORS”.

Published in 1928 and written by Catherine Pullen.

1:1444-- THOMAS FILKESCHE grants a house and 3 acres of land to WILLIAM FILKNESCHE

2: On 22 April 1546 Edward Filtness left in his will, 3 shillings 4 pence....... For the reparacon (repair) of the bells.  He was apparently a bachelor who died in 1580 / 1581 the second of 5 sons of John and Angus Filtness.........John died in 1541.

3:When Thomas Filtness died in October 1559.............it happens that the will of his father JOHN FILTNESSE (Note different spelling, this was quite common as the clerks at the time writing in the parish registers were not entirely literate) dated September 1541, which exists in the Lewes Probate Registry, shows the same portion of land owned by Thomas, and was passed on to him by his father John.

4: The Court records for 17 October 1556 show among other things that Edward Filternershe..... Was arrested for Heresy, but escaped custody.

5: In 1560......Edward Filterneshe..... And the widow of John Filternershe were all fined for neglect of fence repairs.

6: Great numbers of French, Flemings and Walloons fled to England in successive times of persecution. Long lists of their names were prepared in 1562, 1572, and 1622. In these lists names are noted that appear in ROTHERFIELD and CROWBOROUGH.

7: An indenture made in 1576 showed that Edward Ffyltnes of Rotherfield selleth to Thomas Johnson two hundred loads of coal accompanying 12 quarters to every load, to be well filled at the pytt..... This indicates that coalmines existed in Sussex at that time.

8: a list of Church Wardens at Rotherfield list   1527 and 1532 John Filknesch (most likely the same chap) and 1574 Edward Fylnes.

This information was passed on to me by Gerald Filtness, from the United Kingdom 

 

A Young Gerald Filtness                            Gerald's Home

Gerald goes on to say that he has evidence in his files that John Filtness of Little Horsted was married at East Hoathly Sussex a village nearby and that John of Waldron was a blacksmith who married Elizabeth Baker at Pembury a village just over the border in Kent. He also met a TED FITNESS who lived in Essex they tried to find when the L was dropped but were unable to find a connection.

Henry Filtness who was the owner of THE GEORGE INN at Rotherfield sometime after 1835, and prior to 1890 he brought the adjacent land and built ST. DENYS LODGE.  This was later sold to R. Mackensie Grieve in 1899. Henry was the father of Henry who jumped ship in Sydney on the 4th October 1860 and started the Australian Line.  

ST. DENY'S CHURCH---ROTHERFIELD

The church of St. Deny's is situated in the center of Rotherfield and it dominates the town. The first reference to the church dates back to 792 AD

Nothing remains of the original 8th Century church, as it almost certainly would have been built from timber from the surrounding forest. It is possible that there were three wooden churches before the present sandstone one. The present one dates back to 1060. The spire is 165 feet high. The church has been added to over the centuries. The spire was destroyed in a the Great Storm of 1987, and replaced with the use of a helicopter.

 

The Filtness family for centuries have been baptised, married and buried at St. Deny's

  

St. Deny's Altar                                                                                                                                                                Pulpit

The box Pews 

The Font--To the right on the stand can be seen the Font Cover, unfortunately the top section is not shown but it is steeped like a roof

 

The old paintings were discover when some plaster fell off during restoration in 1893 

They date back to the 13th century

 

Outside is a Yew Tree, thought to be 1500 hundred  years old 

 

 

IDENTIFYING PEOPLE

Trying to identify people was a never-ending problem. Because a person was christened as Henry, this was by no means the name he was always known as. My Aunty Enid calls Henry Jnr. Harry, and when you talk about Henry, she looks in wonder at you.  Harry was a common nickname for Henry, and I suppose it was handy when there were a few Henrys around. But I find it hard to understand why Henry Jnr and his son Henry were both known as Harry, It seems to defeat the purpose. Then of course you have the case of Harry having a son called Harry and his two brothers called their first born son Harry and so on. In time you have Harry coming out your ears. Then to make matters worse, much the same happens with Elizabeth, Ellen, Frederick, Charles, William, Bertha, Harriet, and so on. Looking at records, there are many Elisas only to find out that this is the Government shortening for Elizabeth. Then of course you also get Helen in place of Ellen, and so forth. It all goes to make a lot of work. The answer is to have each person’s date of birth, EG: Henry 1883 and so on. This works well. Until we had two John Filtness both born 1854 but everyone thought there was only one. No one could understand when we worked our way down the family tree to the parents of John 1854,when we went back from John to his parents we had different ones. Lots of hair pulling.

             

                      Billy Filtness and his wife Sharon                 Billy's correct name is Charles

 Of course the other trouble is, nicknames that bear no resemblance to their names. For instance Raymond John known as Jack, and Charles Frederick known as Fred. Another that caused me work was an Aunty named Mary Muriel Gladys known as Molly, until I found out that Molly is a name for Mary.  I have a GGG\Grandfather, GG\Grandfather and a G\Grandfather all called Henry. Try working all this out when you did not even know what your Grandfathers name was!!!!

The use of nicknames started back when the landowner employed a person and his family, mostly for life and they became his responsibility.  He gave them board and lodging and a small area of land and when they became too old to work, he looked after them. If he employed a man called say Tom and later another man called Tom they became Young Tom and Old Tom. This worked well until the workforce became larger and there were say four Toms employed. This was possible by the continued use of names, and this was where nicknames started to be used.  Also they started to shorten names as well, for much the same reason. Elizabeth became Betty or Beth, Sarah became Sally, and so on. Second names were used as well. Two Elizabeth’s were say Elizabeth E. for Elizabeth Ellen or just Ellen For Elizabeth Ellen.

At this point of time I wish to explain the fact that some items appear twice in this report. The written book of the Filtness Tree is in A4 size and about three and a half inches thick. It was first written as an Australian story and then later changed to include all the information I had obtained. To rewrite it as one story was a job that horrified me. So please bear with me in the account. I feel its better to see something twice than not at all. I also cannot place it all on this site due to size, not only of text but also photos. This has caused me to cut sections and paste them into different places hopefully each page will make sense.

                                       

As can be seen its quite a large book so the website had to be condensed

The family has mentions around 1045 up to the 1500's.  The name is spelt many different ways but the most common are Filtness, Filtnes, and Fitness. They are all the same families as records show a Filtness gave land to his son Fitness, who in turn gave it to his son Filtness. One family suffered more than most as all their children were recorded as Philtness and every entry is spelt differently.  There is a report that was obtained by Ron Jones,  but was given to me by Gerald Filtness 1928, and I have seen the report in other family trees supplied to me by other people, about the Filtness name, and I will include it later in the book under documents. Our own family in Rotherfield on Henry 1845 marriage certificate spelt the name FILTNEFS and on the rear of the marriage certificate of Henry Jnr: the children’s surnames are spelt the same way. But those are the only places I have seen this spelling. Later this was explained to me, the old English alphabet of that time wrote the double s as fs and a single s as normal (s).

The earliest report connected to our line is on a map of Rotherfield dated 1595 which shows a property of John Filtness which would make him born at least 1570 or earlier. John was a common name in the Filtness line before 1600. A book of Rotherfield wills has some entries, and I will write them as they are spelt in the book. [John Wyltnesse of Retherfield----- my body is to be buryed in the churchyard of Retherfield. Dated 26 June 1555 proved 16th Feb 1558/9. ] [  John Fyltness of the parish of Retherfield-------my body is to be buryed in the chyrche yard of Retherfield 19th Sept 1541   ] 

 I do not know if the spelling of Rotherfield as Retherfield is a misspelling or the old way of spelling the name. Also buryed instead of buried, but done the same way of different occasions, 1541 and 1555.    Then in 1605 the name Nicholas Filtness appeared in the Rotherfield area and his son Nicholas 1628, followed by his son Nicholas 1675. His son was John Filtness of Little Horsted 1702 and then his son, John Filtness of Waldron 1729.

John of Waldron is where all our lines come from, and by this I mean our direct lines as there were many other Filtness families but we cannot at this time connect them, but they no doubt had lines that continued on. John of Waldron had six children. John, Sarah, Henry, Stephen, Robert and Edmond.  Henry had one son and as he had no children, his line stopped. Stephen had four daughters and one son, John, of which nothing is known at this time. That left Robert 1756 and Edmond 1766.  Robert had one son Henry, who in turn had two marriages resulting in five sons and six daughters. From here on he will be referred to as Henry 1790.   Edmond married Elizabeth Unstead and had six sons, Edmund, Frederick, Henry, James, Phillip and Robert.

Robert and Edmund were the two main lines that the Rotherfield Filtness lines descended from. To type the descendants out would become unmanageable and would be very hard to follow or understand and so anyone requiring information can have the direct ancestors line printed out which in most cases would be one page but would not show any brothers or sisters. The full tree at this time is in excess of 60 pages. All the descendants of Robert are listed with many photos of the family. The same situation exists with Henrys tree, with many photos, Birth, Marriage and Death Certificates being available. I have taken over 100 photos of the area, houses and graves of the Australian Filtness line.  I have collected as many birth, death and marriage certificates as I can and Norman Peachell in U.K. and Brian Worsfold in N.Z. have also added to my collection. Rosemarie Forrest Nee Adams from USA helped a lot with photos of Clara’s children’s marriages..

Our main line now drops down to Henry 1793 who worked at the castle at Frant as a Yeoman and also at one time as Gate Keeper, although this may have been the same job as the gatekeepers were in fact Yeomen. He was later a second butler and we can guess that this was a promotion, as butlers were considered top class.  His son Henry 1821, who for our purposes will be known as Henry Snr. Not a lot is known of him, except that he was the owner of The George Inn, at Rotherfield which was built in 1300 and stayed an Inn until February 1998 when it was converted into a set of flats. Henry was a Licensed Victualler when he was married so it was a life long job for him. He brought the land next door and built St. Denys Lodge on it. It was later sold to a Mr. Mackensie Grieve in 1899.

The George Inn was separated from the Graveyard of St. Denys Catholic Church by a narrow footpath, and Henry bought a plot in the corner, closest to the Inn, and requested that he be buried facing the Inn, as he wanted to keep an eye on it. His wish was granted and his plot is the only one facing that way. The grave is about 10 ft from the “George Inn”.

  

Henry Snr: headstone at St. Deny's                                                            Headstones of Henry, daughter Mary and Fanny. There is another headstone to the left hidden by creeper of the

                                                                                                                           Tully Children

Harriet Filtness Daughter of George

   

Hatrriet Filtness wife of  Henry Snr.

His wife Harriet and two daughters are buried there, as are his daughter Sarah Jane’s three children, who died in a short period of time from an epidemic. A lot of Filtness people are christened, married and buried at St. Deny’s Church. Henry and Harriet had eleven children. Frederick died aged 6 years, Mary aged 18 years and Fanny aged 21 years. George married Emma Francis Sellin at St. Saviour’s Church at Tonbridge on 31-03-1879 and they had 13 children. George worked for a Mr. Moon, and was a carter and drove a horse and cart around the area.

Harriet born 10-05-1851,we think did not marry.

Ellen born 14-03-1853 married Frederick Pickett on 18-04-1881 at St. Denys and moved to London.

Bertha Filtness U.K.

Bertha born 20-12-1854 married an Ernest Kenward, on 06-04-1885 also at St.Denys.

Sarah Jane born 29-11-1856 married a Mr. John Tully on 27-03-1875 and lived at Crowborough, having three children, all of whom died in a few weeks from an epidemic, and all are buried with Henry and Harriet at St. Denys.

William we have nothing on him at this stage but do not think he ever married.

Charles married a lady called Caroline, last name not known and he was a chemist at Crowborough running a shop there, which was sold after he died and Caroline moved away and was not heard from again..  

The family of George Filtness    1: William  2: George  3: Charles  4: Alfred  5: Henry Known as Harold 

 6: Reginald  7: Clara  8: Emma  9: Fanny  10: Harriet  11: George William  12: Dolly **   13: Frederick  

14: Mahala  15: Emma Frances          The seven sons all served in the Army at the one time

Dolly was a family mystery, believed to be the daughter of the eldest daughter Ellen, who is believed to have died at childbirth. Although Ellen was married, after her death her husband, name unknown, was shunned by the rest of the family. Dolly was raised by George and Emma and died at an early age.

At this stage it looks like,  children only of George and Henry Jnr carried on the family name in our line.   In the United Kingdom by George and by Henry Jnr. in Australia.

The Australian Line

Henry Jnr: was the first born of Henry and Harriett being born 1845 in Rotherfield, and died 03-06-1913 in Moonbah Australia. Henry Jnr. married Ellen Spellman in 1867 at Moonbah Australia.

They settled at Pleasant View at Lake Jillamatong at Moonbah and had 7 children.

  

Henry Filtness Jnr. Gravesite at Moonbah cemetery

Part of the Moonbah cemetery

The first child of the Australian family was Henry,  (aka Harry), he was born 10-06-1868 and married a Mary Turner in 1891, having 5 children. The first child was Albert James known as Alby, born 24-11-1894 died 18-05-1864. He married Myrtle Girvan in 1920 and they had 5 children.