North Stoneham / Ad Lapidem / Staneham / Stanham Abbatis / Stonam Abbatis

There is entry for [North] Stoneham [variant spelling] in the Domesday survey [http://opendomesday.org/place/SU4417/north-stoneham/] [accessed 30 July 2018]; it reports a church in it. The Victoria County History (Hampshire, vol. 3, 1908) notes: "A chapel evidently existed in North Stoneham as early as the tenth century [...] The abbey [Hyde Abbey] held the church with the manor at the time of the Domesday Survey [...] The various additions and alterations which have brought the church to its present symmetrical plan have destroyed all evidence of any work earlier than the fifteenth century, with the exception of the west window of the tower [...] the font, which has an octagonal bowl of Purbeck marble on a modern stone stem, is under the east arch of the tower. The bowl looks like fifteenth-century work, but may be an older bowl refashioned at that time." The octagonal basin, which appears to be of the limestone known as 'Purbeck marble', could very well be one of typical Early English design, re-cut and probably removed the blind arcade of 16 pointed arches characteristic of this design; the stem, lower base and plinth are modern. Modern, too, is the tall octagonal pyramidal oak cover with dove finial.