Eaton Hastings / Eton / Eton Hastings / Etone / Water Eaton / Water Eton / Water Hastynges

There is an entry for Eaton [Hastings] [variant spelling] in the Domesday survey [http://opendomesday.org/place/SU2698/eaton-hastings/] [accessed 9 June 2015], but it mentions neither cleric nor church in it. Murray (1882) reports "a massive Norm[an] font" in this church. Listed in Cox & Harvey (1907) as a baptismal font of the Early English period. Described in Fred S. Thacker's 'The Stripling Thames' (1909) [http://thames.me.uk/0TST/t00380.htm] [accessed 25 January 2009]: "It endured restoration in 1874, and contains nothing that leaps very suddenly to the eye, unless perhaps its ancient font with the enormously massive plinth". The Victoria County History (Berkshire. Vol. 4, 1924) notes: "The oldest part of the building is the north wall of the nave, which dates from the end of the 11th century, the north doorway and a round-headed window high up in the wall being of this period. [...] The font is ancient and consists of a plain octagonal stone bowl on a high double-chamfered base with embattled moulding. It has a plain 17th-century wooden cover." Described and illustrated in the CRSBI (2015) as a basin of the 12th century: "At W end of nave inside S door. Octagonal basin with deep chamfer below and an octagonal lower lip carved with a row of billet. The basin is carved from a shelly oolitic limestone. It is unlined and sits on a modern chamfered octagonal plinth". The present font is an odd-looking composite of the original plain octagonal basin raised now on a wider and larger octagonal base -said to be modern- that looks like large upturned basin; there is a moulding at the angle where both pieces meet. This lower block must be what Thacker [cf. supra] described in 1909 as "the enormously massive plinth". [NB: we have no information on the font from the 11th-century church here].