East Stoke nr. Wareham No. 1

In Newman & Pevsner (1972): "Font. Hexagonal, C13. On seven supports, very much smoothed." [NB: this font must have been originally in the old church down the meadow, now in ruins [cf. ChurchNotes]]. An archaeological report "East Stoke: The Archaeology of the Old Church of St Mary" by Iain Hewitt, Bronwen Russell and Harry Manley [https://eprints.bournemouth.ac.uk/17382/1/East_Stoke_Arch_Report_2.pdf] [accessed 21 June 2025] informs: "The third edition of Hutchins' History and Antiquities of the County of Dorset(1861, 422) describes the Old Church of St Mary as a small church with chancel and tower. However, this description would have applied to the church as described in the first edition of Hutchins work (1774) and not to the 1861 edition by which time St Mary had been almost wholly demolished. Today, there are no above ground remains of the chancel or tower. The north, east and west walls have gone too. All that remains are sections of the south porch, and a section of the south nave wall adjacent to and east of the porch. The church has been dated to the fifteenth or sixteenth centuries (Royal Commission on Historical Monuments 1970, 274) but the surviving wall fabric suggests a different story."