Dullingham / Dulingham / Dullingeham

There are four entries for Dullingham [variant spelling] in the Domesday survey [http://opendomesday.org/place/TL6357/dullingham/] [accessed 18 May 2016], none of which mentions cleric or church in it. Lysons (1806-1833) mention a font here in a group "in the later Gothic style, being octagonal, and richly ornamented with tracery" [the fonts mentioned by Lysons in this group are: Dullingham, Iselham [i.e., Isleham], Tydd St. Giles and Leverington]. The entry for this church in English Heritage [Listing NGR: TL6315657697] (1959) notes: " Font C15, painted in C17 with shield of James I, clunch with foiled panels, panelled pedestal and moulded plinth." Pevsner (1970) notes that this is actually a later-date font: "Octagonal and seemingly Perp[endicular], but in fact Jacobean; traceried stem, shields in cusped panels on the bowl." The Victoria County History (Cambridge..., vol. 6, 1978) notes: "In the early 12th century Robert de Scalers gave Dullingham church to the Cluniac priory of Thetford (Norf.) [...] A blocked north window with plate tracery and a piscina show the chancel to be 13th-century. The thick-walled three-storey west tower is probably 14th-century [...] The octagonal 15th-century font received new painted royal coats of arms in 1603." Described and illustrated in the Cambridgeshire Churches web site: "At first glance, this looks like another Suffolk influence - that country is full of grand Perpendicular octagonal fonts. However, St Mary's font is a bit unusual. In most respects it's classic Perpendicular: the stout stalk has faces decorated with blank panelling, and the bowl is decorated with panels framed with alternating squares and quatrefoils, and containing shields. They were once painted but there's not much left. One shield, though, has 'IR' on it -- short for 'Iacobus Rex', I assume -- and is surmounted by the imperial crown. This rather suggests that the whole thing is Jacobean, and an essay in antiquarianism. Pevsner certainly thought so -- but I wonder whether that's just because of the dedication to James? It's always possible that that was added later, of course, and it would be very unusual to have such an old-fashioned font made at that date..." [source: www.druidic.org/camchurch]. Adding to Ben Colburn [the writer at CambChurch] argument of re-painting is the fact that the upper rim of the font has significant damage to its upper rim, a damage consistent with the forceful removal of the old cover staples; if the font were Jacobean, it would be unlikely to have undergone that treatment. The motifs on the panels of the basin sides are actually of two shapes alternating all around: a shield in a round octafoil window, or a shield in a square octafoil window; the underbowl appear decorated with a graded chamfer, with buttress-like protrussions at the angles. The stem of the base has two rows of blind cinquefoil arches, two-up two-down arrangement per side, with buttresses at the eight angles; all raised on a graded moulded lower base. The font has a wooden cover of a later date [could even be modern] in the design of the ribs-around-a-central-pivot type on an octagonal base. [We are grateful to Mark Ynys-Mon, of Cambridgeshire Churches [www.druidic.org/camchurch] for the photographs of church and font.