Gressenhall / Garsighnehael / Gressenhale / Gressenhalle / Gressinghale

There is an entry for Gressenhall in the Domesady survey [http://domesdaymap.co.uk/place/TF9515/gressenhall/] [accessed 10 February 2014], but it mentions neither church nor cleric in it. Blomefield (1805-1810) writes: "The Church of Gressenhale is a large pile, built in a cathedral manner, with a north and south transept, and a tower in the middle, as you enter the chancel, which tower decaying, license was granted January 28, 1698, to take down the spire on the top of it. This tower had been repaired in 1491 [...] The church is dedicated to the assumption of the Blessed Virgin [...] In 1344, John de Rothing occurs rector." Blomefield (ibid.) writes also of a chapel here dedicated to St. Nicholas: "founded in a place called Rougholm in Gressinghale, by William de Stutevil, lord of the town, in the reign of Henry III [i.e., 1216-1272] [...] It was a long narrow building, with a north and south transept, and a chancel, which, with the north transept, is in ruins, the rest still standing, and now an house"; it appears it had a chaplain but did not have parochial functions; presumably a parish church would have existed in Gressenhall before the building of this chapel, but the earliets mention of a parish church here is 1344, the date of the first-recorded rector of St. Mary's; the lower stages of the tower are said to be Norman. The present font here is described in Pevsner & Wilson (1999): "Octagonal, Perp[endicular]. Eight shields against the stem; four shields against the bowl; the other four sides defaced. Noted and illustrated in Knott (2006): "The 15th century font has been enthusiastically vandalised; most of the panels feature hanging shields, but on one panel in particular the iconoclasts really went to town. I wonder what it depicted." [NB: it is quite possible that the four vandalised sides had the symbols of the four Evangelists [one of the sides appears to have the outline of a bird; eagle of St. John?]; the underbowl chamfer has had the angel heads chiselled off, and now only the wings can be discerned on the sides; the octagonal stem has the same type of blank hanging shields on the panels, here surmounted by tracery patterns; on a moulded lower base.