Bighton / Bicincgtun / Bicketon / Bighetone / Biketon / Byketon / Bykingtune

There is an entry for Bighton [variant spelling] in the Domesday survey [http://opendomesday.org/place/SU6134/bighton/] [accessed 19 June 2018]; it mentions a church in it. The font in this church is described and illustrated in a letter from William Hamper, of Bormingham, to the editor of The Gentleman's Magazine (issue of October 1809: 905): "the font [...] is capacious and lined with lead", which the author suggests, "cannot be of much less antiquity" than the church mentioned in the Domesday Survey of 1086. The National Gazetteer of 1868 reports "a very large ancient font" in this church. White (1878) writes: "The font is Saxon, and of Purbeck marble." Described in Cox & Harvey (1907) as a noteworthy baptismal font of the Norman period made of Purbeck marble. The Victoria County History (Hampshire, vol. 3, 1908) notes: "The oldest feature in the church [...] may belong to the first quarter of the twelfth century [...] The font, at the west end of the nave, is of a common late twelfth-century type, of Purbeck marble with a shallow square bowl having round-headed arcades on each face, and carried on a round central shaft. Four smaller angle shafts have disappeared, though their marble bases remain." The entry for this church in Hisatoric England [Listing NGR: SU6237834708] reports: "At W end late C12 Purbeck table font with round arcade on sides, on centre column minus outer shafts" in it. Despite some claims of pre-Conquest date -probably on account of the earlier date of the original church itself- the font is, as indicated in the VCH [cf. supra], of a design fairly popular in the late-12th or early-13th century: a square basin with slightly tapering sides decorated with a blind arcade of four round arches per side, the inner well round and lead-lined; on a single central shaft and a square lower base; on the lower base is the moulded shape with eight lobes common to many of these fonts, and which would have accommodated originally the four outer colonnettes that complemented the plain central shaft. There is damage to some areas of the upper rim. Noted in Leach (1975) as a font made of Purbeck marble: "bowl with four panels on each face; new base, but former base and stem remain in church; no subsidiary shafs now" [source given: The Revd. M.H. Griffiths].