Britwell Salome / Britwell Sallom / Brightwell Salome / Brutwelle

There are two entries for Britwell [Salome] [variant spelling] in the Domesday survey [http://opendomesday.org/place/SU6793/britwell-salome/] [accessed 31 October 2017], neither of which mentions priest or church in it. The British Museum holds a coloured lithograph, printed in brown and black ink on cream paper, madeby John Piper in the 1930s of "Covered font and stove in corner of church, beside pews", entitled: "The Font and Tortoise Stove: Britwell Salome" [ref.: Levinson 28 Department: Prints & Drawings. Registration number: 1940,0221.24. Location: British XXc Unmounted Roy] [e-image not yet available]. There is no mention of its font in The Ecclesiastical and Architectural Topography of England: Oxfordshire (1850). Noted in Kelly's Oxford Directory of 1911 simply as "an ancient font". In Sherwood & Pevsner (1974): "Font. C13, cup-shaped, with a C17 ogee-shaped cover. The entry for this parish in the Victoria County History (Oxon, vol. 8, 1964) notes: "As only a part of the tithes of Britwell were granted to Christ Church in the mid-11th century it is possible that the church of Britwell Salome was already in being. [...] The earliest evidence, however, for its existence is the 12th-century Norman work in the church building [...] The church of ST. NICHOLAS, most of which dates from 1867, is a building of flint and stone consisting of chancel, nave, vestry, south porch, and western bell gable. The old church was smaller and had a small wooden bellcot and no vestry. It dated from the 12th century at least, for it had a Romanesque chancel arch and south doorway to the nave [...] At some time before 1812 the old circular font had been replaced by a small wooden pedestal with 'an iron frame affixed to it to receive a bason'". This, however, did not do away with the old font, for, as the VCH entry (ibid.) adds, the old font was kept in the 19th-century re-building of this church, in which "the chancel arch, the south doorway, and the Norman font were saved." According to ONTAWORLD [www.ontaworld.co.uk/england/Oxfordshire/britwellsalome/church3.htm] the "small round font of Norman origin" was retained when the old church was pulled down in 1865, even though the old font had been replaced by a simplified modern version in 1812; the then [1865] incumbent, James Johnson, "must have reinstated the original font, which now stands at the west end of the church".