Funtley

Funtley – from the Anglo-Saxon, "Funtaleg", meaning "Springs", formerly known as Fontley – is a village located to the north of Fareham, Hampshire, England, within the borough of Fareham. Originally it grew due to the development of a quarry there, used to extract the clay that was then turned into bricks—the famous Fareham Red. These were widely used, the most famous usage being the Royal Albert Hall in London.

Sometimes still called Fontley by locals, the village has now developed into a sleepy residential area. The quarry has been turned into a fishing lake, and the local pub is The Miners Arms.

Fontley Iron Mills

Fontley House, Iron Mill Lane was the residence of Samuel Jellicoe from about 1784 until his death in 1812. Samuel Jellicoe was the partner of Henry Cort of Fontley Iron Mills (next door to the house). Henry Cort was the inventor of the rolling mill and the puddling furnace which were of importance for the production of iron during the Napoleonic Wars. Some of Cort's inventions were tried out at these mills.

Cort's innovation was a new process for "fining" iron. This became essential, once blast furnaces were used to extract iron from its ore. The "pig" iron produced was too impure for forging (though it could be cast ): fining removed the impurities. The previous method of fining used a finery hearth fuelled with charcoal. By Cort's time wood for making charcoal had long become too scarce to enable the iron industry to expand: already many blast furnaces were using coke instead of charcoal. What Cort did was to burn coal in the furnace, and "puddle" his impure iron, i.e. stir it with a long rod, in the hot gas of the flames. The purified iron came out as spongy mass, and had to be consolidated (shingling. Another of Cort's innovations was to use grooved rolls in a rolling mill, rather than a hammer to draw the iron out into a bar. This enabled the iron to be rolled into bars with a variety of cross-sections (square, circular, etc.). These two brilliant innovations, were the most important ones for the iron industry in Industrial Revolution. [ R. A. Mott (ed. P. Singer), "Henry Cort: the great finer: creator of puddled iron" (Metals Society, London 1983); Malcolm Low, "Funtley Iron Mill - Henry Cort" - copies available in reference sections of publication can be viewed in the Fareham Library and Westbury Museum, both at Fareham, Hampshire. ]

The Miners Arms

The Miners Arms is so called because the first landlord George Feast was also the contractor for the railway tunnel. He imported a gang of Welsh miners to dig it and one of the Welsh miners had the privilege of naming it. When the railway came it cut Funtley in half and the narrow humpy bridge is another George Feast construction. The pub was soon to become the hub of the village and was originally used as both a pub and a bottle shop for first the miners and then the local brickmakers. The pub was run by at least another three or four generations of the Feasts throughout the height of the brickmaking industry. After the decline of the brickmaking industry, many locals moved to Portsmouth in search of work.

Funtley Church

The Little Church of St Francis is listed as a small stuccoed T shaped church with traceried windows, hoods and bargeboards, designed probably by Architect Jacob Owen. The Little Church possesses its own pleasing characteristics. Simplicity is the dominating feature. The building was originally built as a school for the village children in 1836 and also acted as a Mission Church named "Trinity Fontley Church". A painted window above the altar meets the eye. The design is reputed to have been made or designed by "John Ruskin", it was originally in the Church of Duntisbourne Abbots, Nr Cirencester. The window depicts the Nativity and the Ascension of Christ. [Malcolm Low with Julie Graham, "The stained glass window of The Little Church of St. Francis, Funtley, Hampshire." ] [Malcolm Low, "The History of the Little Church of St. Francis, Funtley, Hampshire." both of these private publications can be viewed in the Fareham Library Reference section and the Westbury Museum, Reference section, Fareham, Hampshire ]

Knowle Hospital

In 1852, Hampshire's first County Lunatic Asylum was built on Knowle Hill just north of the village. [Hampshire County Assylum at Knowle was opened under then provisions of the 1845 Assylums Act. ]

By 1856 the asylum had expanded to take 400 patients, and the growth continued throughout the century - with over 1,000 patients at the asylum by 1900. [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hampshire_County_Lunatic_Asylum ]

The hospital itself was re-named Knowle Mental Hospital c.1923 - 1948 and re-named Knowle Hospital in 1948 closure in 1996. [ Hospital Records Database - a Joint Project of the Wellcome Library & the National Archives.]

References

External links

[http://homepage.ntlworld.com/m.low1/] and follow links for articles of local interest in Fareham by Malcolm Low