Leighton Buzzard / Beaudesert / Busard / Buzzard / Layton / Lecton / Leghton / Lehton / Leighton Busard / Leighton Linslade / Lenton / Lestone [Domesday] / Lygetune / Leyghton

There are three entries for Leighton [Buzzard] [variant spelling] in the Domesday survey [http://opendomesday.org/place/SP9125/leighton-buzzard/] [accessed 22 September 2015], one of which, in the lordship of the Bishop of Lincoln in both 1066 and 1086, mentions a church and four hides of church lands in it. Lysons (1806-1833) note and illustrate the font here as one of a group of circular fonts: “in the shape of a bason standing on five pillars, some of which have capitals of foliage” [Eaton Bray and Holwell are two others in this group]. Paley (1844) mentions this font in his entry for the similar font at Belaugh, Norfolk, although he dates the latter to an earlier, Transitional, period. Listed in Cox & Harvey (1907) as a baptismal font of the Early English period. Bond (1908) describes it as one of a group of "fonts with convex bowls supported by one stout central column and four corner shafts"; he later describes them as a "beautiful class of cup fonts" (ibid.). The Victoria County History (Bedfordshire, vol. 3, 1912) notes: "There was a church attached to the royal manor of Leighton at the Domesday Survey [...] The [present] church was built in the second half of the 13th century [...] At the west end of the nave is a 13th-century font with a round bowl on a central and four-angle shaft." Listed in Tyrrell-Green (1928) as a font of Norman design but dated to the Early English period, the base made up of "columns with circular abacus and with moulded capitals and bases".