Kirby Cane / Chirebeia / Churchebey / Kercheby / Kerkeby / Kirkebia / Kirkeby / Kirkeby Kam / Kirkeby-Kam

The Domesday entry for "Kercheby", transcribed and translated in Blomefield (1805-1810), reports "a church endowed with 20 acres in free alms, and 2 parts of a church endowed with 14 acres". Blomefield (ibid.) writes about the Kirkeby church of his time: "The Church is a rectory dedicated to All-Saints, and the patronage belonged to the abbot of Bury's manor. [...] In 1268, Laurence de Monteforti was instituted rector, presented by Richard de Cam." Blomefield (ibid.) makes an interesting, and perhaps etymologically questionable, comment about the toponym 'Kirkeby', basing his argument on the shaky spelling of the Domesday text: "It is generally said that towns beginning with Kirke, signifies that their site is by some church, [...] but it rather is a compound word, and wrote, as in Domesday, Ker, Che, or Ke; Kerkstead is wrote Ker-chessstead, Ches, or Che, signifies always water, and Ker, is tbe same as Car; thus Carbroke is wrote Cherebroc, and sets forth a clear water, as Kercheby does a dwelling by clear water." Bell (1927) lists an 1839 water-colour drawing of this font by Miles Edmund Cotman in the Bulwer Collection. Described in Pevsner & Wilson (1999): "Against the stem eight shafts. Against the underside of the bowl eight heads (the hairstyle of one is typical of c. 1360-80). Against the bowl shields in cusped fields." Noted and illustrated in Knott (2009): "The font is a fine example from the 14th century. [Its] traceried panels were probably painted once, and the heads peering from beneath the bowl are all different. The font cover remembers the Coronation of Edward VII [i.e., 1902], the first there had been of a British monarch in 65 years." The cusped panels of the basin sides have shields, lion head, etc. inscribed in them; human heads at the angles of the underbowl, flowers on the sides between them; the colonnettes of the base have moulded capitals and bases. The wooden cover is a modern rendering of the classic Jacobean design of a flat flatform with raised ribs. [NB: the church reported in Domesday [cf. supra] may have existed at the time when Ælgiva [aka Ælgiva Ymma / Emma?] gave "The principal manor in this town was in the abbey of St. Edmund of Bury [...] about the year 1020, when King Canute, her lord, was a great benefactor to that abbey." (Blomefield (ibid.) -- we have no information on the earlier font here].