Pavey, Charles

Singer

Collection date: Apr 1908

Area: Sussex

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Charles Pavey at West Chiltington (1860-1945): age 47, 3 songs commencing 21 April 1908: West Chiltington is in the middle of a triangle formed by Horsham, Worthing and Petworth. Sharp was a little disparaging about one of Pavey’s songs ‘William of the Ferry’ (FT1685 Roud12858) – ‘clearly a composed song…not worth copying’. See Field notebook (words) 1908/3 pp18-20. This tale of a young man who was pressganged and survived shipwreck to marry his true love was common as a broadside and in songsters. The song is trite and formulaic, it must be said. Impressment was stopped after the Napoleonic wars in 1815.

Charles Frederick Pavey was born at Ashurst, Sussex on 23/11/1860, youngest of 6 children and only son of John Pavey, gamekeeper, and his wife Sarah. In the 1871 census John Pavey was a ‘woodreeve’, an overseer of the forest. The Pavey family then moved to Shipley.

Charles Pavey married Jane Agate in October qr 1884 (ref 2b 568) and they settled in Shipley, raising 15 children. Charles was an agricultural labourer in all censuses. He only moved to West Chiltington village in 1906, where Sharp found him, aged 50, surrounded by 8 young children! Charles died on 10/1/1945 at West Chiltington.