Chaldon / Calvedone [Domesday] / Chaldron / Chalvedon

There is an entry for this Chaldon [variant spelling] in the Domesday survey [http://opendomesday.org/place/TQ3055/chaldon/] [accessed 16 March 2016]; it reports a church in it. Allen (1831) writes: "The font is a plain square basin, on an octagonal pillar." In Brayley (1850): "The font is an ancient square basin, with an octagon shaft, of Merstham freestone." [NB: Merstham is a calcareous greenish-grey sandstone that gets its name from the Surrey town of the same name]. Listed in Cox & Harvey (1907) as a baptismal font of the Norman period. The Victoria County History (Surrey, vol. 4, 1912) notes that the church goes back to the 11th century, but the font is of a later date and was altered even later: "The font, in local firestone, with shallow, square basin (plain, except for a chamfer and hollow on the upper and lower edge), and octagonal stem on a square plinth, having a hollow on its upper edge, is probably of the 13th century, altered at a later date." Described and illustrated in Hutton (1957) as a Norman baptismal font with an octagonal base.