Beachamwell No. 1 / Beechamwell / Bicham / Bicham-Well / Bycham / Uuella / Wella

Blomefield (1805-1810) writes: "B[icham]-W[ell], Though now looked upon, and accounted as one town, was, at the time of the grand survey, two distinct and separate towns, Well, and Bicham. Well was the most southern part [...] St. Mary. This church stands at the east end of the township of Beacham-Wells; it has a nave, with a south isle annexed, and a chancel [...] There was a church here in the time of the Conqueror, as appears from the Domesday-Book; and Harold, as we there find, had the soc of that manor to which this church belonged. The south isle, which has been erected not many centuries, is covered with lead, and has served for some chapel to a chantry priest. [...] That there was a church here, and endowed with 30 acres of land, at the conquest, appears from the general survey [="Eccla. xxx. ac. val. 11s."]; the patronage of it was then belonging to that manor, which Roger Bigot held [...] John de Bicham occurs rector about 1278." The baptismal font here is described in Tyrrell-Green (1928) as the surviving basin of an old baptismal font from this church; the location ca. 1928 was the porch; the font is described as being from the Post-Reformation period, but made harking back to Gothic style motifs [NB: Tyrrell-Green writes "Beechamwell"; Cockford's uses both spellings]. Knott (2006) informs that the present font, "the wholly secular pillar font, now at the west end of the south aisle", is a product of the 1830s renovation. [NB: Knott (2006), in his entry for Beachamwell All Saints, writes that the site of All Saints was excavated in the early-20th century, and that a font from that dig is now displayed at St. Mary's. Is that the font that Tyrrell-Green saw in the porch?]. [NB: a third medieval church at Beachamwell, St. John's, is also in ruins. St. Mary goes back to Anglo-Saxon times, and Pevsner & Wilson (1999) inform of a late Saxon wheel-headed cross found in the rubble at All Saints, but we have no information on the earlier fonts of any of these churches]