Chalfont St. Giles / Celfunte / Chalfont Saint Giles / Chaufunt St. Giles

There is an entry for Chalfont [St Giles] [variant spelling] in the Domesday survey [http://opendomesday.org/place/SU9893/chalfont-st-giles/] [accessed 27 October 2015], but it mentions neither cleric nor church in it. Lysons (1806-1833) reports a square baptismal font in this church. Sheahan (1862) describes it as: "saquare, very large, and ancient". Described in the RCAHM (Buckinghamshire, 1912): "Font: square bowl of Purbeck marble, 13th-century, re-tooled, central circular stem and, at the corners, four modern shafts [...] cover, of oak, square, with octagonal curved pyramid, and turned finial, 17th-century [...] Near the font, fragment of clunch tracery, and two pieces of one of the original Purbeck marble shafts of the font." The Victoria County History (Buckingham, vol. 3, 1925) notes: "The church of Chalfont St. Giles, mentioned for the first time in 1219 [...] The development of the church from the 12th century, when it probably consisted of chancel, nave, south aisle and west tower, provides interesting study. [...] The font, dating from the 13th century, has a square bowl of Purbeck marble, which has been scraped, and is supported on a central circular stem and four modern shafts. The oak cover is of 17thcentury date. Near the font are parts of its original shafts." Listed in Tyrrell-Green (1928) as a good specimen from a group of fonts "characteristic of the Norman period in architecture", "consisting of a rectangular bowl upon a large central shaft, with four slender supporting shafts at the angles". Described in Pevsner (1960): "Font. C13. Of Purbeck marble [i.e., a type of local limestone]. The table-type on five supports. Blank arches along the sides of the square top have perhaps been chiselled away." The RCAHM (ibid.) reports also a holy-water stoup on the inside of the west wall of the tower, "semi-circular, with trefoiled head, probably 15th-century, sill modern". Noted and illustrated in the CRSBI (2015): "The font is set in the narrow bay added to the W end of the S nave arcade. It is a Purbeck marble import of the usual kind, with a square, shallow bowl on five short Purbeck shafts, four slender ones at the angles and a thick one in the centre. The shafts rest directly on a square clunch block with chamfered upper edges. The faces of the bowl have been shaved with coarse vertical tooling (horizontal at the angles) erasing any decoration that might once have been there. The bowl shows damage to the NE and SW corners consummate with the removal of staples, and the round basin is lined with lead. Noted in Leach (1975) as a font made of Purbeck marble: "the bowl is retooled; the subsidiary shaft are modern, but two pieces of one of the original ones remain in the church" [source given: RCHM (S), 1912]