Wells-next-the-Sea / Duuella / Dwella / Guella / Guelle / Wells next the Sea / Wells-on-Sea

There are six entries for Wells [next the Sea] in the Domesday survey [http://domesdaymap.co.uk/place/TF9143/wells-next-the-sea/] [accessed 13 December 2013], Blomefield (1805-1810) writes "The Church is a rectory, dedicated to All-Saints [...] The church is a regular pile, built of flint and other stone, as most churches are in Norfolk, consisting of a nave, a north and south isle, with a chancel, covered with lead, and a four-square tower", and states that "Sir William de Clare gave the church of Warham (as it is said) to the abbot of Fonteney in France; and the abbot, by fine, in the 35th of Henry III. granted to him the patronage of this church". This William de Clare is identified in Richardson (2011) with dates 1228-1258, which would fit with the year 1251, the date of the patronage grant [cf. supra]; that gives us a frame for the original date of the church here between 1086 and 1251. The present font here is described and illustrated with an engraving by J. Basire in Repton (1812) as a baptismal font "from about the reign of King Henry the Sixth to that of Henry the Eighth" [i.e., 1422-1509+]. Unfortunately that font appears to have been destroyed in the fire that damaged the church in 1879, after which most of the church was re-built in the 1880s in Victorian style. The original font consisted of an octagonal basin with a blind arcade of blind trefoil arches, three per side; below each arch is a small quatrefoil window; an angel holding a shield appears at each of the angles of the underbowl; angels appear also amid the tracery that adorns the sides of the octagonal stem. The new font, located at the west end of the nave, is also octagonal, a late-Victorian replacement, with very busy decoration that includes angel demi-figures, shields charged with Biblical symbols, tracery, etc.; the font cover is even later, 20th-century, vertical scroll ribs around a centre pivot; blue-and-gold.