Great Wilbraham / Wiborsham / Witborham

There are three entries for [Great and Little] Wilbraham [variant spelling] in the Domesday survey [http://opendomesday.org/place/XX0000/great-and-little-wilbraham/] [accessed 20 July 2016], none of which mentions cleric or church in it. Paley's Guide (1844) reports: "The font is Transition-Norman, square, on a square chamfered stem; a good and perfect early model, with some Romanesque enrichment of the basin." Listed in Cox & Harvey (1907) as a baptismal font of the Norman period, a noteworthy example. Kelly's Directory of this county for 1929 informs that the font "dates from the year 1150" and is from the Transitional period [source: transcription by Martin Edwards in GENUKI [www.genuki.org.uk]. Noted in Pevsner (1980): "Font. Square, Norman, with volutes at the corners, chip-carved saltire crosses, rosettes, etc." The Victoria County History (Cambridge…, vol. 10, 2002) notes: "One Wulfhun, on becoming a monk of the newly founded Ramsey abbey (Hunts.), gave it, probably c. 970, a church with 40 a. at Wilbraham, which the abbey gave to Aethelwold, bishop of Winchester, by exchange before 984. […] After the Conquest Great Wilbraham church was probably attached to the Richmond fee: by 1155 that church owed to Mont St. Michel abbey in Normandy (Manche) a £2 pension, […] still due in the mid 13th century […] By 1169 the monks had agreed to grant the church and tithes, with the other Denny endowments, to the Knights Templar […] The king presented in 1313, […] and the Hospitallers from the mid 14th century to the 1530s. […] The square font, its edge carved with bands of diamonds, waves, and zigzag over volutes, […] survives from a 12th-century building." Described and illustrated in the CRSBI (2016) as a baptismal font of the 12th century. Illustrated in the Cambridge Churches web site [www.druidic.org/cambchurch]. The font consists of a square basin raised on a square pedestal, a square lower base and a modern (?) quadrangular plinth. The basin is monolithic but has two volumes: the upper volume occupies about 1/3 and is decorated with continued foliage motif all around [there is repaired section probably where the old cover staple was taken out forcibly resulting in damage]; the lower 2/3 are carved in at the corners and hace volutes to the sides of a blank rectangular motif, almost in the manner of the late cartouche; the stem is square at top and bottom but the angles have been chamfered to octagonal; the lower base is square. The round basin well is lined with lead. The upper sides of the basin show clear evidence of significant repairs with new stone; the location of some of these is consistent with damage caused by the forceful removal of th staples of the old cover.