Great Shelford / Escelford / Escelforde

There are six entries for [Great and Little] Shelford [variant spelling] in the Domesday survey [http://opendomesday.org/place/XX0000/great-and-little-shelford/] [accessed 21 June 2016], two of which mention a church in it. A 1802 drawing of this font by Thomas Fisher is entered in the Catalogue of Drawings & Museum Objects of the Society of Antiquaries of London [http://ads.ahds.ac.uk/catalogue/specColl/SoA_images/detail.cfm?object=1279] [accessed 13 January 2008]. Described in Paley's Guide (1844): "The font is curious for the small size of its basin. It has shields with the instruments of the Passion on the sides: the stem appears once to have had shafts." The Victoria County History (Cambridge..., vol. 8, 1982) notes: "Architectural evidence attests the existence of a church at Great Shelford in the 12th century. […] Several carved and moulded pieces of ashlar in the walls of the chancel and south aisle are evidence of a 12thcentury church"; the VCH entry mentions no font here. The Parish site [www.stmarysgreatshelford.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/Website-Guide.pdf] [accessed 21 June 2016] informs: "The Tower. The Baptistry has a Victorian mosaic floor. The octagonal medieval Font has rather worn original carvings under the bowl which could date from the rebuilding of the church as they bear the arms of the diocese of Ely and of John Fordham, Bishop of Ely 1388-1425." [and] "The plinth of the font […] dates back to the earliest days of the building as it bears the arms of the diocese of Ely and those of John Fordham, Bishop of Ely 1388-1425." Much of the descriptive information on this font in blbiographic sources is misleading; at present [2010] the font is a 19th-century (?) reconstruction of the Late Perpendicular font of this church [see http://www.ipernity.com/doc/stiffleaf/16276357/in/keyword/35567/self] [accessed 21 June 2016]; the one fragment that survives from the 15th-16th century font is the section now placed between the graded underbowl chamfer [modern] and the colonnettes of the base [also modern] it is an octagonal block of tapering sides framed in vertical piping and horizontal moulding; four of the sides have floral decorations that alternate with four charged shields; of the four charged shields, which are illustrated in Fisher's drawing [cf. supra], two are clearly emblems of the Instruments of the Passion; a third is identified as the arms of bishop John Fordham [(d. 1425), nominated to Durham in 1381, and translated to the See of Ely in 1388], in John Woodward's A Treatise on Ecclesiastical Heraldry (1894: 102), who quotes from the MS. Armorial of Geldre, folio 57: "Sable, a chevron between three crosses moline, or"; the fourth shield appears to be charged with St. George's Cross.