London No. 22 / Stepney / Stebenhed / Stibenhede

There are thirteen entries for Stepney [variant spellings] in the Domesday survey [https://opendomesday.org/place/TQ3581/stepney/] [accessed 26 June 2019], none of which mentions cleric or church in it. The entry for this parish in the Victoria County History (Middlesex, vol. 11, 1998) notes: "The church of Stepney, which existed by 1154, [...] served the whole parish until the foundation of chapels of ease and private chapels from the 12th century and of independent parishes from the 14th [...] The suggestion in 1708 of an additional dedication led writers to assume the church was a Saxon foundation, rededicated to St. Dunstan after his canonization in 1029. [...] A groundless statement that Matthew Paris attributed the foundation to Dunstan [...] has often been repeated, [...] but the dedication to him may date from the Church's revived interest in him after 1093. [...] existing church, mostly 15th-century but much restored [...] Alterations in 1967-8 included the formation of a priest's vestry in the organ loft of 1872, a parish room in the hexagonal vestry, and of a baptistery by moving the font from the west end of the nave to the north aisle." The present font, claimed by some to be medieval, possibly Norman, consists of a square basin mounted on a a central broad shaft and four slender colonnettes, the whole raised on a square lower base or plinth of about the same height as the basin itself; one of the sides of the basin shows a row of five Maltese crosses inscribed in circles, another a blind arcade of round arches,... but the font appears, sight unseen, modern, a Victorian attempt at a table-top Norman font design, unless a part of the basin is original and has been totally recarved. The font is not mentioned in Blatch's guide to London churches of 1995.