Harrow on the Hill / Harrow / Herges

There is an entry for Harrow [variant spelling] in the Domesday survey [https://opendomesday.org/place/TQ1589/harrow/] [accessed 23 May 2019]; it reports a priest and "1.0 church lands" in it, but not a church itself, though there must have been one there. The font in this church is illustrated in Lysons (1795) with an etching, with aquatint of 1791, now in the British Museum collections [ref.: 1927,1126.1.17.33 -- PPA354430]. Described and illustrated in Hone (1827): "'some years ago the fine old font of the ancient parish church of Harrow on the Hill [...] was given out to mend the roads with. The feelings of a lady parishoner were outraged, and she was allowed to place it in her garden. Instead of the old stone font the churchwardens put up a marble wash-hand-basin-stand-looking-thing.' The old font was restored to the church in 1846, at which time the "restorers" broke off the original rim and divided the fragments among themselves as keepsakes." [NB: Hone (ibid.) that the "paltry usurper". i.e., the new font, should be placed in the lady's garden instead]. An entry in The Antiquary issue of November 1887 was followed up by a personal testimony from William Winkley, who was personally involved in the rescue of this font; it appeared in The Antiquary (vol. 17, No. 98, February 1888: 86): "THE NORMAN FONT IN HARROW CHURCH. Ante xvi p 220. With reference to your notice of this font in the Antiquary of November, I may state that it was through my instrumentality that it was restored, in 1846, to near its original position in Harrow Church, after having been in the Vicarage garden for a period of forty three years. I happened to come across Hone's Table Book (1827) in which to my great surprise, I found a woodcut of the old Norman font in the garden of the Vicarage, for many years occupied by Mrs. Leith as a dame's house connected with Harrow School. On examination, I saw that it was evidently used to catch water for garden purposes. It was in fair preservation, notwithstanding its long exposure. I then drew the attention of the churchwardens to the matter, and persuaded them to restore it. A new rim and plinth were added. Other pieces of Purbeck marble, which matched the font and its pedestal, were found in the churchyard, and utilised for the defective portions. It was evidently the work of Archbishop Lanfranc's time little apparently now remaining save the western doorway and this font. [signed] William Winckley, F.S.A. Flambards, Harrrow on the Hill, November 28 1887." Listed in Cox & Harvey (1907) as a baptismal font of the Norman period. Described and illustrated in Bond (1908), after Hone's text.: Dru Drury (1949) describes and illustrates this font: "carved from the hard reddish bed, has a round bowl." In Pevsner (1951): "Font. C12, round bowl with ornament developed from scalloped Norman capitals; the shaft with spiral fluting." The entry for this parish in the Victoria County History (Middlesex, vol. 4, 1971) remarks on the fights over the rights on the initial church here, a 'peculiar'; the VCH entry reports "The late-12th-century font is of Purbeck marble". The Parish web site [www.harrowhill.org] notes that the font is from ca. 1200 and made of Purbeck marble [i.e., a type of limestone]. Its current appearance is of a cylindrical basin of slightly convex sides between two parallel mouldings; the sides are ornamented with a large zig-zag and scallop pattern; the stem of the base is narrower, a broad column, patterned in a torsade; the lower base appears of a later date, made of mouldings and raised on a narrow octagonal plinth.