Weston Longville / Weston Longiville / Weston Longueville

A church in "Westuna" endowed with 12 acres is reported in the corresponding entry in the Domesday survey. Blomefield (1805-1810) writes: "The church has a nave and 2 isles, with a chancel, and a tower with 5 bells", and gives "Ralph de Walpole" as first recorded rector, in 1290. Thomas (1846) writes: "The octagonal font, a massive structure of the Norman period, has its capacious bowl leaded, and duly supplied with a drain; it rests on four small shafts, encircling a large cylindrical stem, the whole set on a square pedestal. Beneath this, two square steps admit of easy descent to the pavement level." Described in Pevsner & Wilson (1999): " Ordinary octagonal bowl supported on five columns of Purbeck marble. In the base a reused Crucifix of, possibly, Saxon origins." Noted and illustrated in Knott (2006): "the font. At first sight it is a dull blank octagon set on a rather primitive collonade, but there is more to it than meets the eye. The bowl is slightly asymetrical, and although I can't be certain I think that this font has been cemented over. This was the customary fate of fonts with religious imagery in the 16th century - there is very little evidence of puritan damage of fonts, simply because what was considered superstitious was hidden by the time the 17th century came along. Most bowls had their cement removed in the 19th century, and a few revealed themselves as great treasures." The basin looks like it has been re-cut or re-tooled, with some patches of cement apparently used to cover cracks and other damage; the five-support base appears original; it is not clear what the three-step is made of, though the upper step appears re-cycled.