Brancaster / Brannodunum / Brocestra

There is an entry for Brancaster in the Domesday survey [http://domesdaymap.co.uk/place/TF7743/brancaster/] [accessed 2 April 2014], but it mentions neither church nor cleric in it. Blomefield (1805-1810) writes: "The Church is dedicated to the Virgin Mary, and consists of a nave, a north and south isle, with a chancel; the church, &c. covered with lead, but the chancel is tiled; at the west end stands a large square tower embattled, with four bells and a clock. [...] Mr. John de Braybrook, occurs rector in 1325." There is however an earlier reference in Blomefield (ibid.) concerning the church here: "In the 9th of King John, John de Brancaster, archdeacon of Worcester, obtained on the request of Richard Rusti, the rector, the King's letters, for a vicar under him, saving to the said Richard an annual pension of 2 bezants, the abbey of Ramsey being then void." This would put the existence of a church at Brancaster between 1086 and 1208. The present font is described and illustrated in Bond (1908): "from the latter part of the fourteenth century up to the Dissolution onward a vast number of fonts were remade; many of which are simple and plain, such as Brancaster [...]" Bond's comments and the look of the font itself may warrant the assumption that this font was actually re-tooled to its present starkness: it is an octagonal pedestal font totally plain except for a number of roll mouldings at the underbowl and base. It is raised on a rounded, tire-shaped plinth. The stark plainliness of the font contrats with the decorative artifice of its ornate cover, a fury of cusped and crocketed pinnacles topped by a Latin cross finial. Listed in Tyrrell-Green (1928) as one in a very large group of baptismal fonts that are plain octagonal with straightsided basins. Cautley (1949) describes the font cover as "good (but very badly restored)" and provide an illustration of the cover and the upper basin of the font (ibid.) The font-cover is noted in Howard & Crossley (1919). Recent photographs of the font in Knott (2005) show that it has been heavily whitewahed since the earlier photograph in Cautley ca. 1949.