Penkridge No. 1 / Pankriz

There are two entries for Penkridge [variant spelling] in the Domesday survey [https://opendomesday.org/place/SJ9214/penkridge/] [accessed 18 July 2019] one of which records the Church of Penkridge as lord and tenant both in 1066 and 1086. There is an entry for the College of St. Michael, Penkridge, in the Victoria County History (Stafford, vol. 3, 1970) which notes: "Tradition in the later Middle Ages attributed the foundation of the royal free chapel of St. Michael [...] at Penkridge to King Edgar (957-75). A safer guide is the evidence of the Liber Niger, the register of John Alen, Archbishop of Dublin and Dean of Penkridge from 1528 to 1534; a note written in Alen's own hand and appended to certain records of Penkridge in the register states that the 'original founder' of the church was King Eadred (946-55). [...] In 1086 there is evidence of a community at Penkridge in the nine clerks whom Domesday Book records as holding one hide of land there in demesne of the Crown [...] The permanent union of the deanery of Penkridge and the archbishopric of Dublin had no effect on the status of the church as a royal free chapel." The VCH entry (ibid.) further relates the complex relations between the College and the parish church with the episcopacy and the college patrons, especially those involving episcopal visitations of the church and collegiate against the royal will. The VCH entry (ibid.) informs of the happenings the college faced at the Dissolution: "On the eve of the Dissolution the college of Penkridge comprised the dean and 7 prebendaries, 2 resident canons without prebends, an official principal, 6 vicars, a high deacon, a subdeacon, and a sacrist [...] Penkridge College was dissolved in 1548 under the Act of 1547. [...] The collegiate buildings may have lain to the west of the church. Some buildings of medieval and possibly early-16th-century date survive in this area, and these may have been connected with the college." The entry for this parish in the Victoria County History (Stafford, vol. 5, 1959) repeats some of the information on the origins of this church given already in its vol. 3 (1970); it further notes: "The existing building was begun early in the 13th century and was completed on approximately its present plan by c. 1300. There are no traces of the earlier church. The porch and tower were in the first instance 14th-century additions. In the 16th century the tower was raised, clerestories were added and new windows inserted, so that the exterior is now almost entirely of Perpendicular character. [...] The octagonal font dates from 1668. It has a reeded base and the bowl is carved with various devices including the initials 'C.R.' After a period of disuse the stonework was recut in 1864 and the font restored to the church", but it footnotes the following information: "An earlier inscription is shown in W.S.L., Staffs. Views, viii, p. 10 (b). Another view (p. 10 (a), 1831) describes the font as in the vicarage garden." The South Staffordshire Council web site [www.sstaffs.gov.uk] writes of a "bowl of a medieval font in the West tower" [NB: the original church is 13th-14th century] [cf. Index entry for Penkridge No. 2 for a later font of the 17th century also in this church] [NB: cf. Index entry for Pillaton for a font at the Chapel of St Modwenna, in Pillaton Hall]