Scraptoft No. 1 / Scrapentot

There is an entry for Scraptoft [variant spelling] in the Domesday survey [http://opendomesday.org/place/SK6405/scraptoft/] [accessed 9 September 2015] but it mentions neither cleric nor church in it. A font here is noted and illustrated in Upcott (1818). A letter to the editor of the Gentleman's Magazine of 1844, "by one J.F.--", narrates the vicissitudes of the 13th-cent. "old font of Scraptoft, Co. Leic.": "Its font, which I found embedded in nettles, was turned out of the church to make way for a ridiculous wash-hand basin looking thing on a high stone pedestal. The old font was placed by a western wall, and served the villagers for many a years as a cistern [...]. It was lately removed from its exposed situation, and placed in the belfry, where it now [i.e., ca. 1844] remains, a receptacle from ropes and rubbish. It is of early-English character, and the mouldings are very sharp and nearly perfect." Listed in Cox & Harvey (1907: 206) as a baptismal font of the Early English period [C&H reproduce the above letter from the Gentleman's Magazine]. The depicted font appears located against a garden wall with a bucket on its upper rim to redirect the rain water from the rain pipe into the badly broken basin. The Victoria County History (Leicestershire, 1964) entry for Scraptoft includes information on both fonts: the new replacement and the old one: "In the 18th century [...] a new font was made by a Mr. Phipps of Leicester[...] The 13th-century font had lain in the churchyard and later been used as a waste bin [...] before being restored to the church in the 19th century. It has a plain round bowl on a cylindrical stem to wjcih are attached four shafts with moulded capitals and bases" [source: www.british-history.ac.uk/report.asp?compid=22069] [accessed 5 October 2006]. Pevsner (1984) writes: "Font. Plain, E[arly] E[nglish], on a circular core with four shafts. It was returned to the church in 1842 after lying outside and displaced an C18 baluster font."