Burwell nr. Cambridge / Burewelle / Buruuella / Buruuelle / Burwella / Burwelle

There are five entries for this Burwell [variant spelling] in the Domesday survey [http://opendomesday.org/place/TL5866/burwell/] [accessed 20 July 2016], none of which mentions cleric or church in it. The RCHM (1972) notes: "Font: octagonal lead-lined stone bowl with quatrefoil panels, stem with trefoil-headed panels in each face, and moulded base; 15th-century. The Victoria County History (Cambridge and the Isle of Ely, vol. 10, 2002) notes: "From the 12th century until after 1550 Burwell had two churches in use, standing close together near the south end of the village street. St. Andrew's on the east was appropriated by 1280. St. Mary's to the south-west remained a rectory until its appropriation, possibly the last in the country, in 1544, and was thereafter a vicarage. […] St. Mary's was presumably the church whose advowson Aelfgar had given by the 990s with his Burwell estate to Ramsey abbey […] About 1115 Everard, priest of Burwell, gave to the abbey his church and its lands with eight titheable fields assigned to him, apparently from the abbot's demesne (aula) […] The earliest surviving parts are the 12th-century lower stages, almost 40 ft. high, of the west tower, slightly elongated east-west. In the upper part of that portion's thick walls are narrow roundheaded windows in deep splays, almost all blocked; they include single-light ones, two on the north side, below the 12th-century string course, and larger, mostly paired, windows with shafted jambs above it. The north face has, besides massive corner buttresses, a gabled central pilaster and on the north-west another 12thcentury angle buttress, rising to carved capitals. […] The remainder of the church was rebuilt c. 1450-70 […] The octagonal 15th-century font was covered in 1743 by an ornate wooden spire, probably removed c. 1822". The present wooden cover is a plain and flat octagonal one, modern.