Knapton / Ranapatone / Ranapetone

The Domesday entry for "Ranapetone" mentions neither church nor cleric. Blomefield (1805-1810) writes: "About 1300, William de Huntingfeld was patron of this church, in right of his wife [...] The Church is a rectory dedicated to St. Peter and St. Paul". Lewis' Dictionary of 1848 dates the font to the Norman period. Lingwood ([1908?]) reports "an ancient font, surmounted by a very curious canopy" in this church. Described and illustrated in Bond (1908) as an octagonal basin mounted on nine shafts, the whole raised on three plinths; the basin is ornamented with a low-relief blind arcade of pointed arches. A low-domed octagonal Jacobean-style lid of 1704 is raised on seven thin shafts resting on the basin surface; it is of the same general shape as the lid at Colebroke, but the finial at Knapton is a tall ball-and-spike instead of an angel. On this cover Bond (ibid.) reports the ubiquitous Greek inscription "ΝΙΨΟΝ ΑΝΟΜΗΜΑ ΜΗ ΜΟΝΑΝ ΟΨΙΝ", "cleanse your sin, not just your face" [James (1930) states that the palindrome is inscribed on the font]. Randall (1980) shows both the font and the canopy over it and gives the material of the font as Purbeck marble and its date as 13th century; the date for the cover is 1704. Listed in Leach (1975) as a font made of Purbeck marble. Both font and cover are described in Pevsner & Wilson (1997) with similar information. Noted and illustrated in Knott (2005), who remarks on the cover: "one of the great Norfolk font covers, a beautiful white 18th century Palladian affair bearing the palindromic Greek sentence NIYON ANOMHMA MH MONAN OYIN - 'wash my sins not my face only'. A cover of this description was noted at Hingham in the 1840s, but did not survive the comprehensive Victorian restoration there. I wonder if this could be the same one?".