Seamer nr. Scarborough / Semar / Semær / Semer / Semere / Semour / Seymer

There is an entry for this Seamer [variant spelling] in the Domesday survey [https://opendomesday.org/place/TA0183/seamer/] [accessed 19 December 2019]; it reports a priest and a church in it. Whellan (1857) notes that this church ''was re-built in 1822, except the tower'', and remarks on ''a handsome font, supported by a marble pillar taken from the ruins of a Church in Alexandria, in Egypt, at the Battle of the Nile, in 1798, and brought to England in the ship Antelope. It was presented to the Church in 1822 by Sir Cuthbert Heron, Bart.'' Bulmer's Directory of 1890 states that several furnishings [including "a font, were given in memory of Mr. and Mrs. Wooodall (John and Mary Eleanor)". The entry for this parish in the Victoria County History (York North Riding, vol. 2, 1923) notes: "There was a church with a priest at Seamer in 1086 [...] The original 12th-century building was aisleless, and a central tower was evidently first contemplated, but was probably never erected"; no font mentioned in it. The guide to St. Martin's, Seamer, originally written by the Rev. Prof. David Crouch, and reproduced in the Parish web site [www.st-martins-seamer.net/pages/crouch.htm] informs: "The octagonal font is a nineteenth-century fixture, replacing what seems to have been a small, round Tudor or later replacement for the original medieval font, of which no trace remains." The 19th-century font is described and illustrated in St Martin's Parish we site [www.st-martins-seamer.net]: it consists of an octagonal basin the sides of which are decorated with pairs of trefoil-headed windows or arches, the front [E side] with an additional shield with the Agnus Dei with cross and banner; graded chamfered underbowl with (human?) heads at the corners; raised on an octagonal stem with mouldings at both ends, the lower base slightly wider, octagonal and moulded as well; octagonal plinth. The wooden cover has four-rib-around-a-centre-pivot frame on a flat octagonal base; probably 19th-century as well, but an earlier cover of pyramidal shape is kept in the tower with two pulley-wheels claimed to be part of the old cover-raising system [NB: these wheels are two large for the small size of the old pyramidal cover and must have been meant to raise a much larger and heavier object, despite the local claim]. There is a brass plaque on the side of the plinth that informs the font was donated in the memory of John Woodall in 1888 [NB: the original church dated back to the mid-12th century, but we have no information on the earlier font(s) of this church]