Begbroke / Bechebroc

There is an entry for Begbroke [variant spelling] in the Domesday survey [http://opendomesday.org/place/SP4613/begbroke/] [accessed 27 November 2017], but it mentions neither priest nor church in it. The Guide to the Architectural Antiquities in the Neighbourhood of Oxford (1846) notes: "The font is plain, octagonal, Perpendicular, no ornament remaining but three or four quatrefoils on the stem: it now stands in the tower, but was several years in the rectory garden, having been removed there to make way for a modern Norman basin, which stands in the Chancel, and is still used. The old font was removed from its proper position opposite the door, at a 'restoration' of the Church, about the year 1828". [NB: the modern 'Norman' font not listed in the Index; there should have been an earlier Norman font here, the one from the original church, which was Norman]. Noted in Kelly's Oxford Directory of 1911 [http://www.historicaldirectories.org/hd/d.asp] [accessed 30 June 2007] simply as an octagonal font. Sherwood & Pevsner (1974), however, write: "The octagonal bowl may be an earlier font re-cut. C15 base with quatrefoils". The entry for this parish in the Victoria County History (Oxon., vol. 12, 1990) notes: "The earliest evidence of a church at Begbroke is 12th-century work in the building [...] The church of ST. MICHAEL stands at the north-east end of the old village. It is built of limestone rubble with ashlar dressings, and has a chancel, nave, and west tower all substantially of the 12th century [...] Of later medieval work there remain the font, with octagonal bowl and quatrefoil-decorated stem [...] Visitations in the earlier 16th century revealed that the rector was absent and the parish served not by a curate but by a visiting monk; the rectory house was in ruins, the font unlocked, and the church windows broken [...] A major restoration took place in 1828-9 at the expense of Thomas Robinson [...] Robinson may also have provided a new font; the old one was removed to the rectory garden [...] G. Downes, instigated a major restoration of the church in 1891, under the direction of H. Drinkwater of Oxford [...] The font was replaced by the old one, which had been brought back into the church in the 1840s to stand in the tower."