Streatley / Stradli / Straillei / Stralei / Stredlegh / Stretley

There are five entries for this Streatley [variant spelling] in the Domesday survey [http://opendomesday.org/place/TL0728/streatley/] [accessed 4 May 2015], but there are no churches mentioned in any of them. A font here is noted in Lysons (1806-1833) as one of a group of octagonal fonts made mostly of Totternhoe stone: "Stretley [sic] has ornaments of foliage, and zig-zag mouldings on the pedestal". Kelly's Directory of Bedfordshire (1898) reads: "the font is Early English, consisting of an octagonal basin with richly worked sides, supported on a solid stone with four attached shafts, between which are spaces filled in with totthed ornament." Described in Cox & Harvey (1907) as a baptismal font of the Early English period. The Victoria County History (Bedford, vol. 2, 1908) notes: "The Lincoln Episcopal Registers prove that the advowson, vicarage, and rectory of Streatley belonged to Markyate Priory from its foundation in 1145. [...] The whole [present] church [...], beyond the arcades of the nave, has few architectural attractions; these arcades are of four bays, c. 1340 [...] The font in the west bay of the south arcades is a very fine example of mid-thirteenthcentury detail, having an octagonal bowl with panels of foliage or tracery on each face, and a moulded base to the bowl carried by four engaged shafts with moulded capitals and bases and vertical lines of dogtooth between the shafts." Pevsner (1968) notes: "The stem of the font is E.E. [i.e., Early English], and it has vertical strips of dogtooth. The bowl, however, is a mystery. It is octagonal, with foliage motifs largely steaf-leafish. One panel morover has a blank three-light window with geometrical tracery, i.e. typical late C13. But can the other panels be? -- in spite of their stiff-leaf? The only possible solution seems to be drastic re-cutting and even re-modelling in the C17." The church of St. Margaret's is chiefly a 15th-century building and there is a font in it, to the left of the entrance, that looks of the later date rather than the earlier: it is octagonal with vertical sides decorated with quatrefoil windows; the chamfer of the underbowl appears graded; the pedestal base consists of a short plain stem with mouldings at either end, and a moulded lower base, both octagonal. The font is raised on a quadrangular plinth, and it is covered by a wooden pyramidal lid of slightly concave sides, octagonal in plant, provided with a counterweight raising system.