Haughton / Haughton Chapel / Hockton / Hoctun

There is an entry for this Haughton [variant spelling] in the Domesday survey [https://opendomesday.org/place/SK6772/haughton/] [accessed 6 March 2019] but it mentions neither cleric nor church in it. The entry for this township in the Victoria County History (Lancaster, vol. 4, 1911) mentions no early chapel or churdch here. Blagg (1930) reports "a plain circular Norman font, thirty inches in external diameter, lying uncared for at the west end of the nave", in the chapel of St. James, Houghton. According to a local source [not recorded / not available], this early tub-shaped font was moved to nearby Walesby in 1947 [cf. infra]. [NB: Cox (1912) had already reported a Norman tub font at Walesby ca. 1912]. The entry for Haughton in the Southwell & Nottingham Church History Project [http://southwellchurches.nottingham.ac.uk/haughton-chapel/hhistory.php] [accessed 6 March 2019] notes: "Domesday Book does not record either church or personnel of any classification at Haughton. Its cultivable land lay waste and the manor was considerably impoverished. Despite this assessment in 1086, the chapel’s early Norman south doorway, adjacent herringbone masonry and unadorned tub font, suggest that construction commenced soon afterwards for the purpose of serving a small hamlet. At the present time there is no village in Haughton parish and the chapel ruins are located in solitary isolation. [...] For two hundred and fifty years the chapel remained as part of the Newcastle Estate, but unused and irrelevant it slowly fell into ruin. A faculty was granted in 1825 for ‘The removal of loose stone from Haughton chapel’ and informal ‘tidying up’ was carried out in the 1970s. The font and recumbent effigy were removed to Walesby church in 1947, but the locations of other artefacts noted in 1931 have not been identified. [...] the chancel arch collapsed in 1949, and the building was declared unsafe [...] no action was taken to stabilise the substantial ruins then standing, and they have since collapsed. [...] In 2003 the dimensions of St James’ Chapel can be discerned by dwarf sections of walling among the fallen masonry. Still in situ is the blocked up arcading with stone, doorway and windows possibly recycled from former use in the once existing aisle, and under one arch, exposed by more recent disintegration, coloured medieval decorative artwork." The web site of the Walesby Parish Council [www.walesby.org/content/history/haughton/haughton-chapel-ruins/] [accessed 6 March 2019] notes: "Since 1257 the chapel , dedicated to St James, has been link to the parish church of St Edmunds in Walesby. Until recently 2 fonts from the chapel, as was a gravestone, lay in the churchyard in Walesby. The fonts were Norman with one possibly being of the late Saxon period."