Bishops Stortford / Bishop's Stortford / Stafford / Startford / Storfurde / Storteford

There is an entry for [Bishops] Stortford [variant spelling] in the Domesday survey [http://opendomesday.org/place/TL4921/bishops-stortford/] [accessed 25 October 2016]; ie mentions a priest but not a church in it, though there probably was one there. Cox & Harvey (1907) list this as a baptismal font of the Transitional period [i.e., 1150-1200]. Bond (1908) cites [source unknown but, presumably, the church records] that "paid to old haynes for a cover for the font and for ye formes and other work, xijs, xjd". Reported in Tompkins (1922) as a Norman font "found beneath the floor in 1869". Noted in the Royal Commission on Historical Monuments, Hertforshire (1911): "Font: Purbeck marble bowl, with shallow panelled sides, late 12th-century." [NB: the RCHM (ibid.) also reports a damaged holy-water stoup in the porch -- not included in this Index]. The Victoria County History (Hertford, vol. 3, 1912) notes: "The church of Stortford was appropriated by the Bishops of London to the precentorship of St. Paul's. In 1243 the church was said to be in the gift of the bishop [...] The [present] building belongs to the early part of the 15th century [...] and at various periods during the 19th century the whole church was thoroughly restored. [...] The square bowl of the Purbeck marble font, which is of late 12th-century date, is ornamented on each side with four shallow round-arched sinkings; the stem is modern." Reported in Tompkins (1922) as a Norman font "found beneath the floor in 1869".Reported in Tompkins (1922) as a Norman font "found beneath the floor in 1869". Noted in Pevsner & Cherry (1977) :"Font. C12, square, of Purbeck marble, with shallow blank arches, reinstalled and placed on five supports in the C19." The parish's own WEB site [www.saintmichael.freeserve.co.uk/tour.htm] informs that the basin of the old font, made of Purbeck marble and found buried, dates from ca. 1150 and it was reset on a new base in 1868. Square mounted font typical of the period and similar in design to the Tournai fonts: the square basin has a round inner well; the outer sides of the basin are ornamented with a blind arcade, four arches per side; the new base, probably like the original one, consists of a broad central column and four corner colonnettes, all with round bases and raised on a square lower base. The whole is mounted on a rectangular plinth with a "kneeling stone". There is a modern wooden lid, round and flat, with metal decoration and ring handle, covering the basin well. The inside of the basin well is cylindrical rather than hemispherical "made so to permit the total immersion of baptized infants". [Some of this information stems from an information pamphlet in the church records in Rev. Toby Marchand's e-mail of February 2002]. This same source informs that the old font may have been buried during the Commonwealth, or that it was discarded in 1726 when a new marble font was built for St. Michael's. It was in 1868, during excavations in connection with the underpinning, that workmen found the long-lost basin; it was later restored for use in the church. Noted in Leach (1975) as a font made of Purbeck marble; no details [source given: RCHM, 1910]