Dover No. 1 / Douerei

There are several entries for Dover [variant spelling] in the Domesday survey [https://opendomesday.org/place/TR3241/dover/] [accessed 30 May 2024], one of which reports three churches in it. In his 1863 visit to the renovated Dover castle ancient church -which had earlier been "long in a state of hopeless ruin- Glynne (1877) notes: "The font has a square bowl on an octagonal stem with four legs". Listed in Tyrrell-Green (1928) with a group of Norman-period fonts on which "the arcading is rather rudely represented by a succession of shallow sunk panels with semicircular heads [...] the only adornment" of the basin. The Dover Castle Statutes of 1267, were promulgated in the reign of Henry III [1216-1272] and declared by the Constable of the Castle, Sir Stephen of Pencestre. One of the statutes orders that "The font, Eucharist, the oil and ointments are to be well garded by the Rector", the font possibly from the original date of the church, which Newman (1976) suggests to be ca. 1000 [source: www.dover-web.co.uk/castle_statutes.asp]. [NB: we have no other information on this font]