Middlesbrough / Middleburg / Middlesborough / Mideleburgh / Midelsburgh / Midleburgh / Mydilsburgh

No individual entry found for Middlesbrough in the Domesday survey. Bulmer's Directory of 1890 has: "The ancient font, after being used for filthy purposes, was exalted into a flower-vase, and for threescore years it figured in the pleasure-grounds of the Peases at Darlington, and has at last been presented to that church in which it would have found an appropriate place on its erection fifty years before." In Morris (1931) as round and Norman. Morris (1931) mentions "an interesting , circular, rudely carved, 12th-cent. font." The entry for this parish in the Victoria County History (York North Riding, vol. 2, 1923) notes: "The church of Middlesbrough was in the early 12th century a chapel to Stainton. [...] The church of ST. HILDA [...] was apparently destroyed at the close of the 17th century. [...] Some traces of the old chapel were found in 1846, when a farm-house, which had been built on the site, was taken down. Portions of a square-headed 15th-century window with cinquefoiled lights were found in the walls, together with fragments of 12thcentury moulded stones. [...] The new church of ST. HILDA was erected in 1839 [...] The only relic of antiquity is the circular stone font, which dates from the 12th century. It was restored to the church in 1889 from Darlington, whither it had been conveyed about half a century before, when the site of the cell was laid out for building purposes. [...] The bowl is 2 ft. 3 in. in diameter and 1 ft. 8 in. high, and is covered with rude shallow carvings disposed vertically between incised lines." The entry for the Priory of Middlesbrough in the the Victoria County History (York, vol, 3, 1974) notes: "Robert de Brus, [...] founder of the priory of Guisborough, granted the church of St Hilda of Middlesbrough, with consent of his wife Agnes and Adam his son, to the abbey of Whitby, with land in Newham, on condition that there should be monks serving God and St. Hilda in the church of Middlesbrough, who might be sufficiently maintained by the revenues of that church, the surplus being received by the mother church of Whitby. [...] Archbishop W. Booth granted leave to Robert Godale, monk of Whitby and prior of the cell of Middlesbrough, that, owing to its poverty, the prior or his monk-associate might serve the parish church and minister to the parishioners in place of a secular chaplain, thus saving the expenses of the latter." Noted in Pevsner (1985): "Font. Norman, round, with incised zigzag, a St Andrew's cross, etc." Reported as having been moved to the Dorman Museum at the time of the demolition of the new church in 1969, in Christopher Winn's I never knew that about Yorkshire (Ebury Press, 2010)