Terrestricythere elisabethae sp. nov. is described from a semiterrestrial coastal habitat at two sites in Hampshire, southern England. It is the first record of a living population of the genus outside the Far East (north-west Pacific). Based on extensive collections and from observations of cultures, its morphology is described (including a formal definition of the unique ‘visordont’ hinge), as well as its ontogeny and lifestyle (encompassing habitat, life cycle, mode of life and locomotion). A further new species from Somerset, south-west England is also recorded on the basis of a single specimen but left in open nomenclature. The affinities of the Terrestricytheroidea are discussed in the context of a tentative phylogeny of podocopan Ostracoda. Both carapace and appendage characters are such as to warrant maintaining it as a separate superfamily, which is more closely related to the Cytheroidea and Darwinuloidea than to the Cypridoidea. © 2004 The Linnean Society of London, Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society, 2004, 142, 253–288.