Chislehampton nr. Oxford / Chiselhampton

There is no individual entry for Chislehampton in the Domesday survey [http://opendomesday.org/place/SU5999/chislehampton/] [accessed 25 October 2017]. The Victoria County History (Oxford, vol. 7, 1962) notes: "Chislehampton church in the Middle Ages was a chapelry of Dorchester [...] The present church at Chislehampton, dedicated to St. Katherine, is a small 18th-century structure of stone [...] The new building replaced a medieval chapel dedicated to St. Mary, which was first mentioned in 1146 [...] Seventeenth-century presentments (1623–1706) record that the chapel was in a good state of repair, [...] but in 1763 when Peers petitioned the peculiar court of Dorchester for permission to pull it down he described it as being in 'so ruinous and decayed a condition that the inhabitants cannot assemble for worship without manifest hazard (to) their lives.' [...] The new church was erected out of the old materials about 200 yards west of the original church and had a churchyard attached; previously burials had taken place at Stadhampton. (fn. 241) It was consecrated by the Bishop of Oxford in 1763 [...] The font is contemporary with the church building and a space on the opposite side of the aisle has been left where the christening party might stand." [NB: we have no information on a possible font in the medieval chapel]. Noted in Sherwood & Pevsner (1974): "Very rustic font; a plain marble pudding basin on a wooden base".