Spurrell

A William Sporrell is listed on the Subsidy Roll in 1522,[3] and the Thurgarton parish records show several generations of the family from 1539 onwards.

[5] In 1894 John Thomas Spurrell, the younger son of Richard James Spurrell of Thurgarton House, inherited several thousand acres in Horsham St Faith and Newton St Faith, near Norwich, from Barbara, Countess von Rechberg (daughter of Thomas Jones, 6th Viscount Ranelagh, and the estranged wife of the Austrian statesman Count Johann Bernhard von Rechberg und Rothenlöwen).

In the 1930s part of the estate was requisitioned for the construction of RAF Horsham St Faith, which in 1963 became Norwich International Airport.

Another famous resident of the Manor House in the late nineteenth century was a bear, brought to Bessingham from India by Daniel's son Robert John Spurrell, a cavalry officer who had rowed for the University of Cambridge in the 1878 boat race.

There were Spurrells in Devon in the sixteenth century, so any migration would be difficult to prove due to the lack of early records.

A street developed by a local housing authority in Carmarthen is named Heol Spurrell in honour of the family.