Upper Beeding / Upper Beding / Beeding

Listed in Tyrrell-Green (1928) as one in a very large group of baptismal fonts that are plain octagonal with straightsided basins. The Victoria County History (Sussex, vol. 6, pt. 3, 1987) notes: "In 1073 William de Braose gave the church of Beeding, so described, to his newly founded college at Bramber. [...] Beeding church was confirmed as a parish church, the property of the abbey of St. Florent near Saumur (Maine et Loire), to which the endowment of Bramber college had passed. [...] Nothing survives of the church mentioned in 1073, [...] though the north wall is 12thcentury and in 1981 many Norman architectural fragments were visible in the churchyard wall and elsewhere nearby; [...] The octagonal font is late medieval". Described in Whiteman (1994) as an octagonal font of Sussex marble from the late medieval period ['Sussex marble' is a local limestone and, like 'Purbeck' and others, not really a marble]. [NB: the town is listed in T-G as "Upper Beding", in Crockford's as Beeding; its current name is "Upper Beeding"]. [NB: we have no information on font the 11th-century church here].