Gaddesby / Gadesbie

There are four entries for Gaddesby [variant spelling] in the Domesday survey [http://domesdaymap.co.uk/place/SK6813/gaddesby/] [accessed 4 March 2015], one of which, in the lordship and tenency of King William, mentions a preiest, but not a church in it, though there probably was one there. A font here is noted and illustrated in Upcott (1818). Listed in Cox & Harvey (1907) as a baptismal font of the Early English period. Described in Pevsner (1984): "Font. Octagonal, E[arly] E[nglish], with cusped arches, and in the spandrels coarse stiff-leaf." The Gaddesby Parish web site [www.gaddesby.org.uk] informs: "This is not the original font and was probably made [...] about 1320. It is of limestone, lead lined, and carved with a lily motif. A small consecration cross carved on the only plain face of the upper portion is worthy of note. The font would have had a cover in ancient times and the marks of its fasteners can still be seen on the opposite sides of the upper surface [...] The font is not in its original position, which was, in medieval times, probably near the door of the south aisle." Some of the pointed crocketed arches of the basin arcade have trefoiled arch-heads on the intrados. [NB: this same source notes that the first church at Gaddesby was a 12th-century Norman chapel, and we know from Domesday [cf. supra] that there was a church here by 1086, perhaps even pre-Conquest].