Leicester No. 8 / Ledecestre

There are ten entries for Leicester [variant spelling] in the Domesday survey [http://opendomesday.org/place/SK5804/leicester/] [accessed 28 August 2015], with a total of four churches mentioned in them. Illustrated in a 30 July 1841 drawing by Henry E.L. Dryden, in the Sir Henry Dryden Collection, Northamptonshire. Baptismal font consisting of an octagonal basin with short sides decorated with motifs in panels; very tall underbowl chamfer with trefoiled arches, may be a single piece; splaying lower base also octagonal, with single moulding at the top; on a two-step octagonal plinth, and a larger rectangular plinth below. The general style of the font is 14th-century. [NB: the font appears in Dryden [cf. supra] standing on a single-step round plinth, perhaps the original]. The Victoria County History (Leicestershire, vol. 4, 1958) notes: "In 1086 the Bishop of Lincoln held two churches in Leicester, which were presumably St. Margaret's and its chapel of St. Mary Magdalene, Knighton. [...] By the beginning of the 13th century St. Margaret's Church was a prebendal church of Lincoln Cathedral. [...] The church [...] stands at the north-east corner of Churchgate. A church, presumably on this site, is mentioned in Domesday Book, [...] but no trace of this remains in the present building, although fragments of an aisleless church, thought to date from pre-Conquest times, have been found beneath the present floor level, near the chancel steps. [...] Other fragments discovered by excavation lead to the conclusion that in the late 12th century extensions were made to the church [...] The font is in the south aisle. It dates from the 15th century and is octagonal, decorated with quatrefoil and trefoil panels."