Filby / Filebei / Fileby / Phdeby [Domesday] / Phileby

There are six entries for Filby [variant spelling] in the Domesday survey [http://domesdaymap.co.uk/place/TG4613/filby/] [accessed 28 May 2014], one of which reports a church and churchlands in it. Blomefield (1805-1810) notes "a church with 5 acres" in the part in the part tenanted by William de Escohies [aka Ecouis]; "The Church of Filby is a rectory, dedicated to All-Saints, anciently valued at 22 marks. Ernald Bill had the presentation or advowson of it granted him by King John in his 2d year"[i.e., 1201]. All of the above place a church here by 1201. Tyrrell-Green (1928) writes: "The octagonal form persisted in fonts of the same class in the thirteenth century, with the change that in the Early English style pointed arches take the place of rounded ones in the shallow incised arcading". This font is one of them: the octagonal font consists of an octagonal basin of "Purbeck marble" with almost vertical sides decorated with a very shallow blind arcade of pointed arches, two per panel; taised on a columnar base with a broad central shaft and eight outer colonnettes, one at each angle; graded lower base, also octagonal cf. infra]. Wooden font cover, octagonal and flat, modern. Listed in Leach (1975) as a font made of Purbeck marble. Noted in Pevsner & Wilson (1997) as 13th-century and "drastically recut". Knott (2006) blames the Victorians for "using a genuine 13th century Purbeck marble font, polishing it up and resetting it on a collonade, making the medieval look Victorian rather than the other way around." The wooden cover is round and flat, modern. [NB: two holy-water stoups made of stone are reported in this church, at the north and south entrances, but we have no dates for them].