Bredgar / Bradgare

No entry found for Bredgar in the Domesday survey. Hasted (1798) writes: "King Henry III. gave this church in pure and perpetual alms, to the leprous women of the hospital of St. James, alias St. Jacob, at the end of Wincheap, near Canterbury, so that Mr. Firman, then master of it, should enjoy it for his life, but there was no vicarage endowed in it till archbishop Courtney, in the 15th year of king Richard II. endowed one in it. [...] The church is dedicated to St. John Baptist. It consists of three isles and one chancel, and has a square beacon tower at the west end, in which hang five bells. On the west side of the tower there is a fine Saxon door-case, with zig-zag ornaments; on the capitals of the pillars are carved two heads of a very ludicrous form." The font here was visited by, and is noted in Glynne (1877): "The font has a circular bowl on a cylindrical stem". There are two 'fonts' inside this church: 1)the present one, located by one of the pillars towards the west end of the nave; it consists of a round basindecorated with a torus-scotia-torus motif; it is modern; raised on a round pedestal base and an octagonal graded lower base; the base and lower base are earlier, perhaps even late-medieval; 2)a set of old stones piled together to look like a font or stoup; some of the pieces may not belong together; the upper piece resembles the basin of an octagonal baptismal font, much damaged now, especially around the upper rim, with moulded sides; the other stones that now make up a pedestal basehave pronounced mouldings [NB: we have no information on the origin of these pieces; the fabric of the present church here dates back at least to the early-13th century, and, if Hasted [cf. supra] was right about the west doorway of the tower, there may have been an earlier church here in Anglo-Saxont times, but we do not have any information on its font].