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Archive for July, 2009

Regulator Clock by Edward Funnell John Sherlock very kindly sent in this photo of his regulator clock made by Edward Funnell of Brighton. Click below to see an enlarged photo.
 

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45 years after Robert Lower published his first pamphlet, the vicar of Selmeston, William Douglas Parish, elaborated “A dictionary of Sussex dialect and collection of provincialisms in use in the county of Sussex”. Of course, in 1875, “twus for frenchys an foreigners”. For what use could it be to a Sussex man? Its contents are […]

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This text was added to the later editions of “Jan Cladpole’s Jurney to ‘Merricur”. Once again, it bears witness to conditions of life in the rural Sussex society before 1850 and notably to a certain freedom of expression to be found elsewhere, in religion, for example. TIM CLADPOLE’S ADVICE Or no Grumblen. I’ll tell ye […]

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In this second volume, Jan Cladpole, whose story is again related by Tim, succeeds Tom in a political “travel guide” to America. Word had certainly come back to the village of Chiddingly about slavery in the New World. PREFACE MOST every body knows about Tom Cladpole’s Jurney to Lunnun, so dat says jest naim at […]

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TOM CLADPOLE’S RETURN. TOM I’LL say so agin as I sed it afore, I woll stay at home, an leave Mother no more ; Wud Bowler an Capten, I’ll harrar an plow, Swack out all de barley an fother de cow. Derry down ! Down, down Derry down ! MOTHER To hear ye say so […]

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Richard Lower was born at Alfriston, Sussex on the 19th of September 1782. He opened a school about 1803 in the parish of Chiddingly, where he must have known many of our Funnell ancestors. He resided there until a few months before his death in 1865. In 1830, his first work was printed as a sixpenny pamphlet: Tom Cladpole’s Jurney to Lunnon, told by himself, and written in pure Sussex doggerel by his Uncle Tim.
Spiced with typical British humour, his text offers not only an insight into the changing world our rural ancestors lived in (the London Bobbies were formed in 1829) but also as to how “they spoke Sussex”.
You will not regret reading on…

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Born in the tiny Sussex village of West Firle, Robert Funnell found work on merchant ships at the age of just 16. He later joined the Royal Navy only to find himself, in the late 1850s, on a contreversed mission in which his commodore was accused of avoiding combat with Russian warships at De Castries Bay, discovered an island and fought piracy on the China Seas. In the early 1860s, Robert was in Western Africa, defending her Majesty’s interests on the Congo River…

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Thanks to Geoff Isted and his modern marketing techniques, I was amongst the first visitors to the exhibition at Fletching Village Hall last Friday, 26th June 2009. There was so much information that it took me several days to digest and place in three hundred years of the sociological/political picture I had of my ancestors.

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