So, what’s a Challerpoy then?

Deciphering 250-year-old parish documents can be a challenge even though they were no longer written in Latin. Some are torn, crumpled scraps of paper with very faded writing. All of them have letters written differently to the modern day plus abbreviations which take some figuring out. Handwriting style varies a lot as you might expect and spelling is inconsistent even within the space of a couple of sentences.

Apart from the registers for baptisms, marriages and burials, the parish chest contains a variety of records, many of them from the period 1740 – 1830. Churchwardens are ‘proper guardians or keepers of the parish church’ and their accounts show expenses in maintaining the fabric of the church and furnishing the bread and wine for the Communion. They were increasingly though given a number of secular tasks by acts of parliament and the accounts show some of the things they had to pay for.

In 1740, Joseph Higgs, one of the two churchwardens for the parish paid Mr. Kem’s lad 6d for 12 Challerpoy heads and another 6d for 4 dozen of sparrowheads. Later in the year he paid Charles Stewart for 3 Chalerpys and Audret, (presumably Alldritt), for 11 Chal. and one doz Spar heads.

All this is interspersed with the sort of expense that you would expect from a churchwarden:

• For two strikes of lime for ye use of ye Church – 5s
• For mason work – 2s 6d
• 2 quarts of red port – 2s 4d
• One pint of Sark – 1s 3d
• For ye 3 bollles – 4d

This last entry must have been for bottles and it shows that Joseph Higgs didn’t cross his t’s but there was a difference in the shape of the ‘t’ and the ‘l’. Looking back at the Challerpoy/Chalerpys entries it was now clear that it should read Chatterpoy/Chaterpys and the harsh chatter of a magpie immediately sprang to mind.

In 1533 Henry VIII had brought in an Act requiring parish authorities i.e. churchwardens to make payments for the killing of most wild birds and some animals because he feared food shortages would disrupt the land and, as the preamble to the legislation stated, ‘Innumerable nombre of Rookes, Crowes and Choughs do daily brede and increase throughout this Realme, which do yearly destroye, devoure and consume a wonderful and mervelous quantitie of Corne and Greyne of all kyndes’. In 1566 Elizabeth I extended the fight against wildlife by including a much wider range of animals e.g. rats, mice, hedgehogs and moles.

Churchwardens were required by law to provide a crow net and maintain it. Later churchwarden accounts show that different individuals were paid for up to 22 dozen of sparrowheads at a time. Although the records do not mention any other small birds it apparently included any bird that might interfere with any harvest so finches, for example, would probably fall under the catchall word ‘sparrows’. Likewise chatterpoys would probably include rooks, crows etc. The act also allowed payment for birds eggs but so far the records do not mention them.

A very clearly written 1742 account by Thomas Ford, churchwarden, shows the following two lines, one after the other:

• paid for 4 doz of Sparrows & 2 Chatterpyes – 7d
• paid for 4 doz of Sparrows & 16 Magpises – 1s 2d

So, is a chatterpie different to a magpie? A few quick searches confirm that Chatterpie was a common name for a magpie in East Anglia (and obviously in Staffordshire) whilst it was called Margaret’s pie in parts of Worcestershire. (Mag is a nickname for Margaret and Margaret was used to denote a chatterer whilst the ‘pie’ part comes from the latin name for the bird, Pica pica, via old French pie}.

Stepping back and looking at the various churchwarden documents as a whole it looks as if they can be divided into two separate groups. The first group, generally on smaller and less regularly shaped bits of paper, were often slightly indistinct as if the nib of the pen was misshapen, had noticeably worse handwriting and very inconsistent spelling. (A dozen could be written as ‘dusson’ and hundred as ‘hunder’ for instance). The second group was often written on both sides of the page and have nice, clear, very legible, copperplate handwriting.

It looks like the well-written documents could well be written by a clerk from a consolidation of smaller notes, (which have not been kept), and that the consecutive lines from the 1742 document were originally written on two separate documents by two different individuals, one of whom called a magpie a chatterpie.

So the mysterious ‘Challerpoy’ turns out to be nothing more exotic than a magpie