Exton nr. Cottersmore / Egeston / Exentune / Ecston / Extune

There are two entries for this Exton [variant spelling] in the Domesday survey [http://opendomesday.org/place/SK9211/exton/] [accessed 16 July 2015], neither of which mention cleric or church in it. A font here is described and illustrated [engraving by Orlando Jewitt] in Paley (1844): unmounted octagonal font from the 14th century, "a very elegant example of a Decorated Font [...] beautiful even in a style remarkable for beauty". The basin sides have a an arcade of eight trefoil ogee arches with crocketed finials; between these finials are the heads, alternately male and female, right under the upper rim. Inside each arch of the arcade there is a lancet-shaped niche housing an ogee window. There is a two-step plinth, also octagonal. Listed Cox & Harvey (1907), Bond (1908), Tyrrell-Green (1928). The Victoria County History (Rutland, vol. 2, 1935) notes: "The church of Exton was given 'with the whole tithe and whatsoever Walter the chaplain held in the same' by Henry I [i.e., 1100-1135] to the monks of La Charité serving God in the church of St. Andrew of Northampton, a grant confirmed by his grandson Henry II, by Hugh de Wells, Bishop of Lincoln, and in 1329 by Edward III. [...] No part of the [present] building is older than the 13th century, in the early part of which period the church appears to have been rebuilt on its present symmetrical plan, the tower being added in the 14th century, and the clearstory erected [...] The octagonal 14th-century tub font has shafted angles with moulded bases and capitals from which spring trefoiled ogee arches terminating in rich finials, between which, in the spandrels, are heads, alternately male and female. Within the niches the sides have trefoiled panels. [...] The flat cover of oak and bronze dates from 1905." Noted in Pevsner (1984): "Without any division between stem and bowl. Eight shafts with deep niches between. Ogee arches and heads in the spandrels. Probably later C14."