Foxton / Faxton / Foxtone / Foxestone

There are two entries for this Foxton [variant spelling] in the Domesday survey [http://domesdaymap.co.uk/place/SP7090/foxton/] [accessed 8 November 2014], one of which, in the lordship of Robert de Bucy, reports a priest on it; there is no mention of a church, though there probably was one in it. A font here is listed in Cox & Harvey (1907) as a baptismal font of the Norman period. Noted in Kelly's Directory of Leicestershire (1929): "the font is of very early date". In Pevsner (1984): "Font. Square, Norman, but carved so as to fit on an octagonal base (not the present one). Intersected arches; the shafts at the corners bend inwards as if made of plastcine, to connect with the octagon." The Victoria County History (Leicestershire, 1964) notes that a part of the shaft of a Saxon cross "and the 12th-century font bowl indicate the existence of an early church on the site [...] The large square font bowl probably dates from the mid-12th century. It is carved with interlaced arcading, the beaded semi-circular arches resting on cushion capitals. At the angles the columns are bent round under projecting corbels. The pedestal is not the original one [...] and appears to have been made up of two 13th-century capitals, one upside-down, taken from composite piers". A footnote in this same source [VCH above] informs on the original(?) lower base of the font: "A large square stone now in the garden of the Chestnuts, Foxton, might be the original base of the font. Circular depressions on its upper surface could have housed a central pedestal and small supporting shafts" [source: www.british-history.ac.uk/report.asp?compid=22047] [accessed 21 September 2006]. Described and illustrated in Cook (1976). Bond (1908) refers to a baptismal font in "Faxton" having a side recess 2 1/2 inches square; he must referring to the Foxton font [there is no Faxton site recorded in England]. On-site notes: the basin is square at the top but the sides are carved in, diagonally, about half-way down so that the bottom of the basin is much narrower. The sides of the basin are covered by a bling arcade of intersecting round arches; the arches are of the bead-tape kind, with elaborate capitals and bases; the four corner columns of the basin sides just bend inwards half-way down to the basin side, thus giving the basin a strange shape. A series of torus separate the basin from the columnar (constructional) base. [NB: the church has a rectangular object now used as a flower stand that may -or may not- have been a holy-water stoup - cf. Image area]. Not mentioned in the CRSBI [last checked 14 October 2016].