Dunchurch / Donecerce

There is an entry for Dunchurch [variant spelling] in the the Domesday survey [http://domesdaymap.co.uk/place/SP4871/dunchurch/] [accessed 27 January 2015], and it mentions a priest, but not a church in it, though there probably was one there. Cox & Harvey (1907) list a baptismal font of the Norman period in this church. The Victoria County History (Warwick, vol. 6, 1951) notes: "The parish church [...] was almost entirely rebuilt late in the 14th century and the tower added probably early in the 15th century. Little is left of the earlier church other than the south wall of the chancel, the bases of the arcade pillars and the piscinas, all of 13th-century date, together with the north door, of the early 14th century, all re-used in the rebuilding [...] The font, which stands in the centre of the tower, is an octagonal stone one dated 1848, with trefoiled panels on each face. [...] In addition there is the damaged basin of a 12th-century font lying in the nave". The old font is described and illustrated in the CRSBI (2015) as the basin of a disused Romanesque baptismal font, "very similar to that in current use at Churchover [...] both are carved from the same pale red sandstone. They could be from the same workshop". The CRSBI (ibid.) reports that the church guide "states that the font [,,,] was removed from the church in 1852 and re-discovered in a shrubbery in the vicarage garden in 1914". The image in CRSBI [date of visit reported as 8 Sep 1994] shows the abandoned basin, upside-down in a corner of the church (?), a bucket-shaped, almost cylindrical, basin with rope motif between two thin mouldings around the upper basin side; the front side -towards the photographer- shows a part of the rim missing; the bottom -now visible- shows the drain hole in the centre. Described as a baptismal font from the Norman period in the Rugby Borough Council's Official Guide [web version]. Thurlaston, a hamlet of Dunchurch, has a Victorian church (St. Edmund's) and never had a medieval church; the font in St. Edmund's is also modern.