Coltishall / Cokereshala / Coketeshala / Colteshall / Coulshill

There are two entries for Coltishall [variant spellings] in the Domesday survey [https://opendomesday.org/place/TG2719/coltishall/] [accessed 12 February 2023], one of which reports "2 churches. 0.15 church lands" in it. Blomefield (1805-1810) writes: "at the Conqueror's survey [...] Colteshall had then a church and 10 acres of glebe [...] There was a Church here, long before the Conquest, but the present building, after it was finished, was dedicated to St. John the Baptist, on the day of the Conversion of St. Paul, by William de Middleton Bishop of Norwich, in the year 1284; the tower is square, and hath six bells in it, the nave and chancel are thatched, the north porch and south isle leaded, and the porch tiled". Blomefield (ibid.) names "Roger" as first recorded rector, in 1270. Illustrated in a 1813 print from an etching by T. Wright, now in the British Museum collections [ref.: 1902,0514.1112 -- PPA364566]. The font here is noted in Lewis' Dictionary of 1848 as Norman. This font is described and illustrated in Tyrrell-Green (1928), Pevsner & Wilson (1997) and in Billett (2006). Illustrated in Knott (2009). Square mounted baptismal font of the Norman period; the sides of the basin are ornamented with a blind arcade of sixteen round arches, four per side; the basin well is round; the base consists of a central pillar and four corner colonnettes, all round and plain; the whole is raised on a low square platform. Wooden font cover consisting of a Jacobean-style centre piece of eight scroll ribs around a centre pivot on a flat square platform with decorative knobs at the angles; brightly gilded and painted. There is a pencil and watercolour painting of this font in the Norwich Castle Museum & Art Gallery [Museum no.: NWHCM : 1951.235.1223.B189 : F] [www.sandys.norfolk.gov.uk/sand148.htm] [accessed 23 May 2013], in which the font appears with a square base instead of the present five-support, the same as on the 1813 print at the BM above; we know the font had the five-shaft support ca. 1928 as shown in Tyrrell-Green's book, showing that, at least between 1813 and 1928 the base was the quadrangular block shown in those two sources. The font cover appears in the same painting but it shows unpainted or faded. Noted in Leach (1975) as a font made of Purbeck marble: "bowl with four panels on each face" [source given: The Revd. J. Fellingham].