Burnham nr. Southend-on-Sea / Burnham-on-Crouch (Essex)

There are two entries for this Burnham [variant spelling] in the Domesday survey [http://opendomesday.org/place/TQ9496/burnham/] [accessed 27 October 2015], neither of which mentions cleric or church in it. Lewis' Dictionary of 1848 reports an elaborately carved font in this church. Noted in the Royal Commission on Historical Monuments (Essex, 1916-1923): "Font: square bowl of Purbeck marble with moulded under-edge, worked round heads of side shafts, cylindrical stem and four small angle shafts, late 12th-century." 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". Noted n Pevsner (1976) and in Bettley & Pevsner (2007): "Font. c.1200, square bowl on five supports, Purbeck marble, undecorated." Noted and illustrated in the CRSBI (2015): "The font is sited in the S aisle to the W of the S doorway. It has a square Purbeck marble bowl, slightly tapered toward the bottom with integral pseudo-capitals corresponding to the slender Purbeck shafts at the angles. The central shaft is much thicker. The shafts stand on a rectagular slab, quadrant moulded around the upper surface. All of this is original, but the slab stands on a modern chamfered plinth. Bowl, shafts and the base slab are all badly eroded. The bowl was originally carved with blind arcading but this is now only visible in a few places, notably on the E face which is best preserved. The bowl is lead lined, and the lining has been taken over the upper surface, completely hiding it, and down some way onto the faces." Noted in Leach (1975) as a font made of Purbeck marble: "the base is modern" [source given: RCHM (SE), 1923]