Oakington No. 1 / Hochinton / Hochintone / Hockington / Oakington-with-Westwick

There are five entries for Oakington [variant spelling] in the Domesday survey [http://opendomesday.org/place/TL4164/oakington/] [accessed 29 June 2016], none of which mentions a church in it; one of the entries shows that it had been in the lordship fo "Alfgeat the priest" in 1066, before it passed under the lordship of the Abbey of Ely in 1086; there may therefore have been a priest here in pre-Conquest times. The Lysons (1806-1833) report square basin here, the sides decorated with round arches, raised on four pillars. Illustrated in an October 1837 sketch by Henry E.L. Dryden, now in the Sir Henry Dryden Collection, Northamptonshire. Described in Paley's Guide (1844): "The font is square, with circular arches rudely carved on the bowl, supported on five legs." Listed in Cox & Harvey (1907) as a baptismal font of the early Norman period [NB: C&H include two entries for Oakington: one for an early Norman font and another for an Early English one -- it appears to be an error and only one font exists in this church]. Kelly's Directory of this county for 1929 records that "the church retains an ancient stone font consisting of a rudely arcaded basin, supported on five shafts." [source: 2003 transcription by Martin Edwards]. Noted in Pevsner (1970): "Font. Square, of stone with three blank arcades on each side; five polygonal supports. The date is C12." The Victoria History of the Counties of England (Cambridge…, vol. 9, 1989) notes: "The square font with arcaded sides, probably [...] 12th-century, is mounted on a 15th-century base." Described and illustrated in the CRSBI (2016): "a square, arcaded 12thc. bowl mortared onto a later medieval support (five octagonal shafts with high moulded bases but no capitals, supporting a chamfered block [...])" The entry for Oakington in the Cambridgeshire Churches [www.druidic.org/camchurch/] describes and illustrates only one font: "a square Norman bowl sitting on five octagonal pillars -- on each face of the bowl is a very crudely cut blank arcade with three openings." The font cover is octagonal and wooden with metal decorations and handle, probably modern.