Funtley

Funtley – from the Anglo Saxon, "Funtaleg", "spring field (clearing)", is a hamlet or exurb north of Fareham, Hampshire, England. It forms a projection towards the South Downs National Park and is generally included within Fareham's population as it is within its built up area. At present the village is unparished, as the creation of a parish council was rejected by Fareham Borough Council, despite having the support of the majority of residents. The village grew from the development of a clay quarry, the clay used to make chimney pots and bricks — acclaimed Fareham red (bricks) used to build premium Victorian buildings such as the Royal Albert Hall in London, and Knowle Hospital near Fareham. Sometimes known as Fontley by locals (reflecting its probable longstanding alternative pronunciation, as it appears in church use and many other place names such as Mottisfont) the village is no longer a discrete settlement owing to post World War II growth of Fareham, it is an exurb in rural surrounds separated from the town by the M27 motorway. Its brickworks is long closed and the chapel closed in 2018. Its former clay quarry is a fishing lake. The village pub, The Miner's Arms, echoes its mid 19th century spell as a near independent community.

The Miner's Arms is so called because the first landlord, George Feast, was the contractor for the railway tunnel (and also the narrow, humpback bridge). Feast imported a gang of Welsh miners to dig the tunnel, and one of the miners had the privilege of naming it. The pub soon became the hub of the village and was originally both a pub and bottle shop for the miners and, later, the local brick makers; it was run by at least three or four generations of the Feast family throughout the height of the brickmaking industry. After the decline of the industry, many inhabitants moved to Portsmouth and Gosport for work.

Funtley has a park laid to grass with a children's playground, and a meadow managed for conservation by Fareham Borough Council. There is also a fishing lake with a public footpath.

Fontley House in Iron Mill Lane was home to Samuel Jellicoe from about 1784 until his death in 1812. He was the partner of Henry Cort of Fontley Iron Mills, adjacent. Cort was the inventor of the rolling mill and the puddling furnace, important 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 then "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 the Industrial Revolution. The former ruins of this industrial revolution iron mill with smelter's yard showed where the ore was also smelted, local ironstone being used. Accordingly, in 1279 John of Brittany withdrew his suit (of court) (claim to outright or continued ownership) in respect of his manors of Crofton, Lee Markes, and Funtley, and as he did not appear the sheriff was ordered to distrain (in favour of the King) upon his land. It was among a handful of manors in Titchfield's parish, the church of which dates to 680 AD, and contributed to the early founding of Titchfield Abbey. The other manor vested in the Arundel family from 1241 to 1615, but who long let it, successively to the de Hoyvilles, Uvedales, others, Sir Richard Corbett and then Rashleighs whose 19th century holders had it much divided (sold off in pieces). The buyer, Charles Hamilton and Co. Ltd, held the pub for 26 years until its sale to Bass Charrington on 1 July 1970. It came into the possession of George Gale and Co. Ltd in July 1991 and passed by the 2010s to Fullers Brewery.

The closed Anglican Little Church of St Francis or Chapel was a mission church of St Peter & St Paul, Fareham, in the Diocese of Portsmouth. The church closed in 2018. Listed as a small, stuccoed, T shaped church with traceried windows, hoods and bargeboards, it was probably designed by the Irish architect Jacob Owen (1778 1870). Simplicity is its dominant feature, built as a community school in 1836, becoming Trinity Fontley Church. The painted window above the altar, depicting the Nativity and the Ascension of Christ, is reputed to have been made or designed by John Ruskin; it was originally in the Church of Duntisbourne Abbots, near Cirencester.

The Funtley Deviation was a railway built to the west of the village avoiding Fareham tunnel. With the later abandonment of the deviation and full reversion to the tunnel route, the present railway route passes through the middle of the village, but there is no railway station serving it.