Terrington St. John / Turingtonea / Tyrington St. John

There are two entries for Terrington in the Domesday survey [http://domesdaymap.co.uk/place/XX0000/terrington-st-clement-and-st-john/] [accessed 28 November 2013], neither of which mentions church or cleric in it. Blomefield (1805-1810) states: "This town ["Tyrington"], though very considerable in its bounds and lands, is not mentioned in the book of Domesday [...] That the town of Tyrington was in the Saxon age, long before the Conquest, appears from a grant of Godric, brother to Ædnoth, abbot of Ramsey, about the year 970, who gave to that abbey his lands, in Turingtonea, on condition that Ædnoth should free it from the service called Heregeat; [...] which was wont to be paid to the lord byfree heirs after their father's decease, now called a Hariot. By this it appears that the aforesaid Godric had, about a century before the conquest, a lordship in this town of Tyrington." The earliest mention in Blomefield (ibid.) of a church here is in relation to an issue on the expansion of the Bishop of Ely's manor and how it affected "the patronage of the church of Tyrington, and of the chapel of St. John's", an issue which was raised in the fifth year of Henry III's reign, 1221, a date by which the chapel or church of St. John already existed. Blomefield (ibid.) adds: "There is a chapel dedicated to St. John, belonging to this church where the vicar of Tyrington is to perform duty and service; and seems to be built in 1423 [...] It is said to be made parochial and free from the church of St. Clement, by Thomas Archbishop of Canterbury, in 1530, but I find no institution to it as a parochial church, and remains at this time a chapel to the said church, for the service of the parishioners, being about 2 miles from the mother church. It is a regular pile, with a nave, 2 isles, and a chancel covered with lead, a square stone tower with four pinnacles and 4 bells standing at the south west corner." This description would belong to the present building, a replacement perhaps of the one documented in Henry III's reign [cf. supra]. A third old temple is noted in Blomefield (ibid.), "Here was also a free chapel dedicated to St. James", the first two chaplains of which were recorded as: "1300, Roger Mayl, presented by the Bishop of Norwich, to the chapel of the manor of William Batayle, of Tyrington. 1302, Peter de Creyk, to the free chapel of St. James, by William Batayle." [NB: we have no information on the liturgical or sacramental functions covered by these chaplains, baptism being, prhaps, not among them]. The present font in St. John's church is described in Tyrrell-Green (1928) as "a good contemporary parallel" of the early-17th century font at the later of two fonts nearby King's Lynn St. Nicholas' ["a large and handsome octagonal font, with strap-work and other ornamental characteristic of the earlier half of the seventeenth century, whose general appearance closely corresponds to that of a typical fifteenth-century font"]. Noted in Pevsner & Wilson (1999): "Octagonal. Dated 1632. Strapwork on the bowl, tracery in the stem" [NB: is the date 1632 recorded in one of the cartouche-like motifs on the basin sides?] Noted and illustrated in Knott (2005) with date in the 18th century. The wooden font cover, octagonal and with a moulded top and cross finial may be 19th century. [cf. Index entry for King's Lynn No. 2]