Edgmond / Edgmund / Edmendune / Egemon / Egmundon-cum-Novo Burgo / Egmendon-cum-Novo-Burgo

There is an entry for Edgmond [variant spelling] in the Domesday survey [http://domesdaymap.co.uk/place/SJ7219/edgmond/] [accessed 2 November 2014], but it mentions neither cleric nor church in it. The font here is illustrated in Eyton (1859- ), who states: "There is no proof that this was a Saxon foundation", but, Eyton adds, its chapel must have been founded within eight years of Domesday [1086] because Roger of Montgomery gave it to Shrewsbury Abbey at that time [Roger de Montgomerie (d.1094) was a counsellor of William the Conqueror]. Illustrated in Anderson (1864), who suggests the church was "founded apparently by Earl Roger de Montgomery" [NB: the engravings in Eyton and Anderson are the same, probably a drawing by J. Roberts]. Romilly Allen (1888) states that a baptismal font similar in shape and ornamentation to the font at Deerhurst [cf. Index entry] "exists at Edgmund". Described in Cox & Harvey (1907) as a noteworthy baptismal font of the Norman period. Bond (1908) describes the baptismal font at Edgmond [like Romilly Allen, Bond uses the spelling "Edgmund"] as one of the few he is willing to concede a pre-Conquest date "on account of the character of the ornamental features". As Bond comments in the case of another such font, "it certainly seems improbable that any Norman craftsman could have produced work so characteristically Pre-Conquest as that of the font at Deerhurst, nor even if he could, is it likely that he would have cared to do so" (ibid.) Newman & Pevsner (2006) write: "Font. Early Norman, presumably before 1122. Thub-shaped, with a big E[ast] panel of unsystematic loose interlace and bands of geometrical motifs elsewhere." The font is one of a design not uncommon throughout the ages, fonts which decoration seemed to be a sampling of the abilities if the master or workshop that produced it.