Reigate / Cherchefelle / Cherchfelle / Crechesfeld / Reygate / Riegate

There is an entry for Reigate [variant spelling] in the Domesday survey [http://opendomesday.org/place/TQ2549/reigate/] [accessed 15 December 2015], but it mantions neither cleric nor church in it. Brayley (1850) remarks: "There can, however, be no doubt of a church having existed here in the time of King John" [i.e., 1199-1216], but Brayley (ibid.) found the "stone font, at the west end of the south aisle, [...] small and unimportant". The unimportant font noted in Brayley [cf. supra] was captured in a 1824 watercolour by John Hassell; the painting is now in the Surrey History Centre, Woking [Ref No: 4348/2/40/4] [www.exploringsurreyspast.org.uk/collections/getrecord/SHBAR_4348_491] [accessed 15 December 2015]. The font is indeed unimportant in that it is a modern 17th-18th century of dull design lacking in character. Cox & Harvey (1907) list here a baptismal font of the Decorated period. The Victoria County History (Surrey, vol. 3, 1911) suggests the original medieval church may date from ca. 1180-1190, with many additions and changes through the years, but, "The font, at the west end of the south aisle, is modern, and copied from an unfortunate model, the octagonal bowl and stem being carved with flamboyant tracery and the bowl with twentyfour grotesque heads leering and putting out their tongues. In old work this sort of thing might be deemed quaint, but in a modern font it is surely rather childish." [NB: a photograph of the Reigate font by Frith & Co. Ltd. is catalogued in the Surrey History Centre [Reference Number: 06316 03493] -- we have no information on the font of the original 12th-century church here]