Stratton St. Michael / Estratuna / Stratomn / Stratton Omnium Sanctorum / Stratton St. Miles / Stratum / Stratuna

There are nine entries for Stratton [St Mary and St Michael] [variant spelling] in the Domesday survey [http://opendomesday.org/place/XX0000/stratton-st-mary-and-st-michael/] [accessed 18 October 2015], two of which mention a church and church lands in each. Blomefield (1805-1810) writes: Stratton "originally belonged to the East-Anglian kings, and the superiour jurisdiction over the whole remained in the Crown, till the Conqueror gave it to Alan Earl of Richmond, who held it at the survey [...] Sigebert King of the East-Angles, on his erection of the bishoprick, gave the southern part of the town to Felix, the first Bishop of the East-Angles, and so it became part of the bishoprick; and in the Confessor's time, Bishop Ailmer held it as such [...] The motherchurch of St. Mary the Virgin, always belonged to it, which was probably founded by one of the Bishops that owned it, and that before Ailmar's time [NB: Ailmar, perhaps aka Aethelmar, Agelmar, etc.; 10thC?] [...] the church of which, in all probability, was first founded by [...] Hunfrid or Humfry, the ancestor of the family afterwards sirnamed De Straton, lords of the manors here". Blomefield (ibid.) adds: "Stratton Omnium Sanctorum [...] I suppose came to be fixed so, because anciently the church is called St. Michael and All-Saints [...] The church is 25 yards long and 7 broad, it hath a square tower and two bells, (fn. 23) the south porch is tiled, the nave and chancel thatched", and names "Rob. le Blake" as first recorded rector here, in 1278; in 1449 it was consolidated to St. Peter's. A font in the present church is described in Pevsner & Wilson (1999): "Font. C15. With lions and four demi-figures of angels." Noted and illustrated in Knott (2006). The carving is not particularly good, but the font is of the typical East Anglian type; the shields held by angels appear blank; there are motifs on the angles of the underbowl, but they appear to be floral rather than the more common angel heads; floral motifs on the band below as well; the stem has buttresses on four sides, but if there were lions on the others they are no longer there; moulded lower base. Raised on a cruciform plinth. The font cover is a modern version of the old Jacobean modern with raised ribs. [NB: we have no information on the font from the original 11th-century church here].