Furse (surname)

Furse is a Devon surname as well as one of several names for the evergreen shrub more widely known as gorse. The name is believed to be derived from Old English: fyrse (meaning "gorse"). the name is often compared to that of Furze that is also found in Cornwall. The first recorded Furse appears in the South-west circuit of the Domesday Book (known as the Exon Domesday) as Robert Furse.

The Furse family was resident on the sstate of Halsdon in north Devon) from 1680 until the early 1980s. Up to 1680 the family was resident at Morshead, this being established before the first Visitation to the county of Devon in 1534. The farm Morshead passed to a John Furse in 1525 when Johan the only daughter of John Morshead (whose ancestors had changed their family name from Le Bon to Morshead soon after they occupied the farm), married John Furse. This was recorded by John Furse's son Robert in the "Furse Diary" written in 1593.

Although various records for short periods after the Domesday Book (1086) exist, conclusive proof of lineage of the Furses of Halsdon in parish records is not found until the end of the 17th century with Philip Furse (1650-1720) who acquired Halsdon from a maternal uncle. Parish records before this time do not exist as the local churches were subject to attack during the English Civil War (1642-1651). The area was a royalist stronghold and fighting was particularly bitter, leading to the destruction of a number of important local buildings.

Despite the lack of parish records, other sources exist for lineages of the landed gentry, enabling genealogists John Green and Carina Robins, to compile family trees.

The family's working lives mostly consisted of one or more of Church of England duty, public service in the armed forces (except for the RAF) and oil painting. See section below of more notable members of this period. Until the middle of the twentieth century, the family was generally restricted in marriage to a handful of other large families from the same part of the country, but that were of the same social class, those being Chadwyck-Healey, Marriott, Lubbock, one of the Church of England (English) Abraham families, and Maud (see John Redcliffe-Maud). Others include the French name Dolignon, and Addington Symonds.

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