Littleton nr. Winchester / Liteltone

There is an entry for this Littleton [variant spelling] in the Domesday survey [http://opendomesday.org/place/SU2848/littleton/] [accessed 17 July 2018], but it mentions neither priest nor church in it [cf. infra]. White (1878) reports "an ancient and handsome stone of Purbeck marble" in this Norman church, but gives the dedication as St. Mary's [cf. VCH infra]. Listed in Cox & Harvey (1907) as a baptismal font of the Early English period. The Victoria County History (Hampshire, vol. 3, 1908) gives the dedication to "St. Mary Magdalene (originally St. Katherine)" and notes: "The church of Littleton existed at the time of the Domesday Survey, as one of the nine churches included in Chilcomb. [...] It evidently belonged to the bishop of Winchester until granted in the twelfth century by Bishop Henry de Blois to the prior and convent of St. Swithun ad religiosos hospites suscipiendos. [...] The font, near the south door of the nave, is the most interesting thing in the church, belonging to the last quarter of the twelfth century. It is of Purbeck marble, with a square bowl carved with scalloped and imbricated ornament, and having a circular sinking, the angles of the upper surface filled in with foliage. It stands on a central and four angle shafts, with moulded capitals and bases." The font is illustrated and described in Graham Davies' 'St Catherine's Church Littleton: a Guide and History' as a fine Norman font made of Purbeck marble, consisting of a square basin with vertical sides decorated with what appears to be heads or faces carved on them, raised on a columnar base with a broad central shaft and four outer colonnetes, all of it resting on a moulded lower base and a square plinth [no faces or heads are visible in the source image but rather a pattern of scallop or large-leaf motif around the shown sides]. As this source points out, this base "is similar to the Tournai font which stands in nearby Winchester Cathedral" [NB: this is an appropriate comment, especially since some of the bases of imported fonts such as the Tournai one at Winchester Cathedral may have been locally made, whereas the finer work, the bowl, was imported]. This same source describes the square font cover, "made during the 19th century from quatrefoil panelling of the medieval rood screen at Longparish which was demolished in 1860". The Hampshire Treasures site, vol. I, p. 178 [www.hants.gov.uk], however, mentions "a C15 painted wood cover".