Chiddingfold / Chedelingefelt / Chidingefalde / Chudyngfold

No entry found for Chiddingfold in the Domesday survey. Allen (1831) notes: "The font is a round basin, on a pillar of Sussex marble." Noted in Brayley (1850): "The font is a plain but massive basin, of Sussex marble, standing on a circular column and base of the same material." The Victoria County History (Surrey, vol. 3, 1911) reports: "The church is not mentioned in the Domesday Survey. Chiddingfold was then parochially part of Godalming, of which it was later a chapelry. It was in existence late in the 12th century, for circa 1180 Ralph de Lechlade granted the church of Chiddingfold with the chapel of Piperham (i.e. Haslemere) to his clerk, Geoffrey de Lechlade, to hold for an annual pension of 1 lb. of wax; and a vicar was instituted in 1185. [...] There is some possibility that the nave occupies the same area as a pre-Conquest original, and that portions of its quoins remain in the piers at the angles [...] The early church would appear to have remained till the end of the 12th century, when aisles were added to the nave, and the forerunners of the present arcades were pierced through the older walls. [...] There is a 13th-century font, disused, besides the modern one." [NB: the VCH (ibid.) notes that the original church dated to pre-Conquest dates, but we have no information on its font] [NB: the modern font is a square table-top basin raised on five columnar supports, a late-Victorian imitation of a classic Norman font design; it has a pyramidal wooden cover probably of the same date]