Annette,
Sorry to get back to you so slowly. I have been spending days and days on familysearchpilot finding all sorts of lines. I have been putting down surname family groups going way back in time, for each of the towns very near Cleobury Morimer (Neen Savage, Neen Sollars, Milton, Hopton Wafers, Kinlet, and Bayton, Worcestershire): noting births (christenings) under each set of parents, marriages, and deaths. Then, it is a matter of detective work and logic to find the right persons. I hadn't looked at the LDS stuff in years and didn't know they had the pilot info on line. Its a real gold mine of info. Besides on the Gittins side I have been doing the same on the Mantle side. You might check my inquiry and correspondence with Z on surname Mantle.
On my Philpott side in Dover and Deal, Kent, I found two possible parents for my Charles Philpott, b. 1775+/_ (1775 per census and death cert.) in Canterbury: either the son b. 1776 of Stephen Philpott and Mary ______ , or the "Base born" b. 1774 of Mary Philpott. Glad you told me what "base" meant.
If you are interested in these lines I will provide you with the main findings for each step in the tree: the parents and dates for: births, marriages, and deaths, and the children of the parents. Let me know....
Finally, you are right about the spelling of surnames. When people couldn't read or write, the census takers spelled phonetically. It was worse in America when the immigrants also couldn't even speak English....
Oldleaf