Rumboldswyke / Rumboldswhyke

The Victoria County History (Sussex, vol. 4, 1953) notes: "The original church, a chancel and nave, was built in the 11th century, and suffered no more than minor alterations till the 19th. [...] The church is now [i.e., ca.1953] only in occasional use, the regular parish services being held in the modern church of St. George. [...] The font and other fittings [...] are modern. [...] immediately east of the doorway is the trefoil-headed recess of a holy-water stoup of which the basin is missing [...] perhaps 13th-century." The VCH entry (ibid.) includes a 1937 plan of the church interior in which a font appears located in the northwest area of the nave. Green (2008) writes: "When working on the floor of St Mary’s in June 1959 builders unearthed some cut stones, part of the wall that was demolished for the 1866 extension. No sign was found of the medieval font that disappeared about that time." [NB: we have no information on the font of the original 11th-century church here, or any subsequent fonts either; the font noted in the VCH plan was probably 19th-century, and even that one was removed during the redundancy period, whereabouts unknown to us. The church was made redundant in 1994 and 2000, and turned into a commerical building in 2002 [cf. Diocese of Chichester document [www.churchofengland.org/media/56455/chichester.pdf] [accessed 19 September 2012].