Cheam / Cegham / Ceiham / Cheame / Cheham / Cheyhem / West Cheam

There is an entry for Cheam [variant spelling] in the Domesday survey [http://opendomesday.org/place/TQ2463/cheam/] [accessed 17 March 2016]; it reports a church in it. Brayley (1850), reports on a notice inside the church that reads: "the church of Cheme was burnt by lightning in the year 1639"; Brayley (ibid.) adds: "The font is a plain circular basin of stone, standing on a pedestal, in front of the communion-table." The Victoria County History (Surrey, vol. 4, 1912) notes: "There was a church in Cheam on the archbishop's land at the time of the Survey. [...] The church of ST. DUNSTAN, erected in 1864, stands on a new site to the north of the former church, the east end of the chancel of which has been preserved as a sepulchral chapel"; the VCH entry mentions no font in it. The London Borough of Sutton website for the Church of St. Albans, in Cheam [www.sutton.gov.uk/index.aspx?articleid=1903] [accessed 9 August 2010], notes: "The font dates from the mid-18th century and came from the old St Dunstan's Church". This same entry adds: "The Domesday book mentions a church part of which is still standing in the churchyard as the Lumley Chapel. The chapel was the chancel of the church until 1864 when most of the old church was demolished and replaced by the present building. [...] The Lumley Chapel is the oldest standing building in the London Borough of Sutton, as the fragments of blocked window in the north wall is of late Saxon or early Norman date." The same website illustrates "a painting by Gideon Yates in the Sutton Heritage Collection" that shows the nave of the Chapel looking east, with a baptismal font in the centre of the aisle, a font that fits the 18th-century date description given in Brayley [cf. supra]. The said font appears as typically Georgian, a small hemispherical basin raised on a baluster-type pedestal base. The present font consists of a large octagonal basin with vertical sides decorated on the alternate panels with circled crosses, the eight angles decorated with stylised colonnettes, row of nail-nead motif below; on a base of short columns with large foliated capitals, moulded bases; a typical unbalanced Victorian rendering of earlier font models; the pistacchio-hue shafts are particularly hedious. [NB: we have no information on the medieval font here].