Wolverhampton / Hampton / Handone / Hantone / Heantune / Wlvronehamptona / Wolvrenehamptonia

There is an entry for Wolverhampton [variant spelling] in the Domesday survey [https://opendomesday.org/place/SO9198/wolverhampton/] [accessed 19 July 2019]; it mentions neither cleric nor church in it, but the lordship was in the hands of the canons of St Mary in both 1066 and 1086, which obviates the existence of a collegiate church there by 1066. The William Salt Library has a 1798 engraving of this font [Reference ID: ' SV-XII.103 (45/10110)'] " by R.W. Basire after a drawing by Rev. S. Shaw." Described in The Gentleman's Magazine (issue of December 1804: 1132): "The font is [...] rudely sculptured with figures of saints; but they have been rudely handled and whitewashed." Reported in Lewis' Dictionary of 1831 as one of the most remarkable fonts in the county. Noted in Tymms (1834) as a font "sculptured with numerous figures". Lewis' Dictionary of 1848 elaborates: "the octagonal font, of great antiquity, supported on a shaft, the faces of which are embellished with figures of St. Anthony, St. Paul, and St. Peter, in bas-relief, is richly ornamented with bosses, flowers, and foliage." Described in Cox-Harvey (1907) as "The most remarkable one [Gothic font] is that of the collegiate church of Wolverhampton, which is a late example of late 14th-cent. date, probably of the reign of Richard II. The panels of the octagonal bowl bear floral and other devices, the one to the east being carved with a bell, which may imply that the font was the gift of a bell-founder. On the chamfer below the bowl are a series of quatre-foils. The octagonal shaft has a series of small figures of saints in trefoil-headed niches; St. Anthony with his pig, and St. Bartholomew with flaying knife, are easy to recognize." [NB: Cox-Harvey make no mention of the inscription clearly dating the basin to 1660; is this because they thought it had been added later? Their description appears to indicate that they accepted the basin to be of the same date as the base. The collegiate church they refer to must be St. Peter's]. The font is described and illustrated in Bond (1908) as a stone baptismal font made up of a Restoration-period basin mounted on an earlier base (the original basin probably lost to the iconoclastic zealots in the Cromwellian armies). The entry for the College of St Peter in Wolverhampton in the Victoria County History (Stafford, vol. 3, 1970) notes: "The foundation of the College of Wolverhampton has been attributed to the Lady Wulfrun since the discovery, about 1560, of a charter by which she endowed a minster at Hampton. [...] If this charter is authentic, [...] the date of the foundation (or refoundation) is 994. [...] Wulfrun's connexion with the minster is attested by the fact that it added her name to its own; by about 1080 it was called 'the church of Wolvrenehamptonia'. [...] From this the name Wolverhampton is derived. [...] In Wulfrun's time the church was dedicated to St. Mary. It was still St. Mary's in 1086, [...] but by the middle of the 12th century the change to St. Peter had occurred. [...] in 1547 [...] the college was dissolved and replaced by a vicarage endowed with £20 a year to support a preaching minister and curate. [...] The accession of Mary [1553] led to the restoration of the college of Wolverhampton as an act of royal favour to St. George's, Windsor [...] The establishment of the restored college remained much as it was before the dissolution. [...] The parochial duties of St. Peter's fell on the sacrist. [...] The sacrist clung to his financial rights all the more tenaciously because fees from burials, marriages, and christenings provided a large part of his income. [...] The Cathedrals Act of 1840 provided that, on the dean's death, the deanery and peculiar were to be suppressed [...] and after Hobart's death in 1846 the college was speedily wound up. [...] Finally in 1848 the Wolverhampton Church Act dissolved the college and transferred its possessions to the Ecclesiastical Commissioners. St. Peter's was established as a rectory". The Phaidon guide to Great Britain... (1985) lists the font at the Church of St. Peter as 15th-century. At least one of the panels is inscribed on the frame, and the inscription includes a date, 1660, obviously the date of the new basin [cf. supra for notes on Cox-Harvey]. The base is also octagonal, one of the common types of the 15th-century: each side of the pedestal base has a trefoil arch in which a human figure stands on a little shelf or plinth. The SPSCR web site for St. Peter's church states that each of the figures which surround the base "has some connection with St Peter's and the unification of the deanery with Windsor". The panels on the sides of the octagonal basin have anchoring spots drilled into the stone, as if somthing else would have menat to be covering the carving inside;