Methley / Medelai

There is an entry for Methley [variant spelling] in the Domesday survey [http://opendomesday.org/place/SE3927/methley/] [accessed 18 October 2018]; it reports a priest and a church in it. Illustration by Jewitt in Fawcett (1844); plain octagonal mounted font; tall wooden cover consisting of two lower volumes with vertical sides ornamented with foliage and plant motifs; the upper volume is a narrow pyramid; all octagonal. The font is raised on a square plinth. Noted in Glynne's 18 September 1869 visit to this church (in Butler, 2007): "The font has an octagonal bowl, of debased character, with a wooden cover of tabernacle work, of similar date, but handsome." Mee (1941) notes: "the 14th century font has a Jacobean cover". Pevsner (1986 c1967) writes only of the cover: "Elizabethan, octagonal, two tiers of openwork panels and a spire over. Made according to the will of 1584 of one Richard Webster of Methley, painter." Ryder (1993) reports "a fifteenth-century font with a cover of 1584" here. The entry for Methley in The Rose & Lavender site [https://roseandlavender.co.uk/2017/06/12/st-oswalds-methleys-jewel-in-the-crown/] [accessed 18 October 2018] notes: "The stone font by the south door in St Oswald’s is made of stone and lined with lead and dates from the 15th century. The wooden font cover is Jacobean and was provided by the will of Richard Webster of Methley in 1584. The font was actually discarded and rediscovered in 1898 by the Rev H. Armstrong. The bowl was found in a poultry yard and the stem was used by a mason at the other end of the village!"