Even a skilled craft, however, was no guarantee against being forced to look to the parish for help. Thomas Funnell was a cooper, but in 1821 he had a wife and eight children at home, though two were old enough to earn money when work was available. Eleven years later – by which time the Funnells had two more children to support – the parish paid for the whole family, except the eldest son, to migrate to America on condition that they did not return to be a burden on the Poor Rate for at least five years. None of the family could read or write.

Thomas Funnell, the cooper; was he a relative of Widow Elizabeth Funnell, the largest farmer in the parish? The probability is high that they had, somewhere back along the line, a common ancestor, especially as all told sixteen heads of Chiddingly household were surnamed “Funnell”. Beside Elizabeth, two – Samuel and John – were farmers, though on a considerably smaller scale than the widow. Two Funnells owned shops: John, described as a “grocer and draper” at The Shop House, right in the middle of the parish next to the Church; and James, whose Gunn shop was so named not because of what it sold but because it was at Gun Hill. Two other Funnells were brickmakers and two more lived with another brickmaker (not named Funnell) to whom they may have been assistants; or they may have been paupers, for no occupation is given for either. The remaining seven Funnells were labourers, one of whom, Thomas (36) lived with his wife Sarah (31) and four young children at Stonehill, a house “containing two dwellings” as the Census describes it. The other family at Stonehill was that of 62-year old William Dunk, with his wife Elizabeth (61), daughter Frances (18) and grand-daughter Jane (5).

These families, both sub-tenants of Widow Elizabeth Funnell, who rented the house as part of the Earl of Plymouth’s estate, provide an example of how houses, as well as people, can go up and down in the world. Stonehill, in the words of Sir Nicolas Pevsner, is “a perfect timber-framed house of the 15^th century.” It had been built as the home of a prosperous mediaeval yeoman and today, after extensive renovation and modernisation, stands as an almost hidden jewel in a parish not especially distinguished for its architecture. Its modern market price is well into six figures – but in 1821 it housed two labourers’ families!

Did Widow Elizabeth Funnell acknowledge the family relationship with Thomas Funnell at Stonehill or with Thomas Funnell, the cooper, or with any of the other poor Funnells of Chiddingly? Similarly did Thomas Guy of Place House and William Guy of Firths admit to kinship with all the other Guys of Chiddingly? By and large they were a more prosperous clan than the Funnells, for Walter and David, as well as Thomas Guy Junior, were farmers and Widow Mary Guy at Nash Street seems to have been a farmer’s widow. James Guy, who lived in George Noakes’ House at Holmes Hill was a yeoman, a farmer on a small scale but owning his own land freehold; whilst Thomas Guy, the wheelwright, had one servant, and John Guy, the carter, had two. Richard Guy, the carpenter, we have met already. How many of them, however, acknowledged Samuel Guy, who was only a labourer and who had at least two daughters out as servants in other households: Hannah, in Benjamin Boniface’s House by the Windmills; and Ann, aged 12, with Thomas Guy, the wheelwright.