Peatling Magna / Great Peatling / Ptelinge

There are six entries for Peatling [variant spelling] [known today as Peatling Magna and Peatling Parva] in the Domesday survey [http://opendomesday.org/place/XX0000/peatling/] [accessed 19 August 2015], one of which mentions a priest, though not a church in it, though there probably was one here. A font here is noted and illustrated in Upcott (1818). The font is noted in White's Directory of 1863: "In the nave is an ancient circular font". A B&W photograph of the interior of this church, taken 13 October 1904, shows the font is the main aisle; the font is all one piece, monolithic, but a basin has been outlined by re-cutting, althouth the cutting has not yet separated the volumes; whereas the upper half, the basin has been re-tooled, the lower half is still rough; the 17th-century wooden cover shows on the font at that time. Pevsner (1984) notes the 17th-century font cover, but not the font itself [NB: part of the church goes back to the late 13th century]. The further re-cutting of the font must therefore have taken place after 1904 [cf. supra] and has resulted in a large, almost cylindrical basin decorated with a plain flat moulding at the upper rim; the underbowl rests now on a broad central shaft, but the outer area appears to have been re-cut to fit four ridiculously slender colonnettes of coloured marble of Victorian taste; round lower base and round plinth, both modern or partly recovered from the old base, but re-cut. The re-cutting of the font is noted also in English Heritage [Listing NGR: SP5948292462] (1955): "C13 font modified C19 by the addition of marble shafts to support massive undecorated basin." [NB: this is actually not accurate, since the 1904 photograph proves that the final re-cutting and addition of the columnar base must have taken place in the 20th century. It should be said, nonetheless, that the 'flavour' of the final re-cutting is indeed typically Victorian].