Balmer / Burgamera

INFORMATION

FontID: 18246BAL
Object Type: Baptismal Font1?
Church/Chapel: Balmer Chapel [disappeared]
Church Location: [cf. FontNotes]
Country Name: England
Location: East Sussex, South East
Directions to Site: Deserted village; only a farm remains, located about 1 km NNE of Falmer. The site of the medieval village is just N of the present farm
Ecclesiastic Region: Diocese of Chichester
Historical Region: Hundred of Younsmere -- Rape of Lewes - Sussex
Font Location in Church: [cf. FontNotes]
Century and Period: 11th century, Pre-Conquest? / Norman
Font Notes:
The Victoria County History (Sussex, vol. 7, 1940) entry for the parish of Falmer notes: "The chapel of Balmer, mentioned in Domesday Book as an ecclesiola and held by Lewes Priory in 1535, [...] has now disappeared. The field stretching down the hillside west of the large pond is, however, known as Church Laine, and it would therefore seem probable that the church stood, as at Falmer and Stanmer, immediately adjacent to the mere." Cooper (2006) notes: "Balmer village was just north of Kingston parish [...] It was a hamlet within the parish of Falmer, which lies a mile or so away, but is was substantial enough to have its own chapel. By the middle of the sixteenth century it has decisively diminished in size, so much so that the chapel was demolished". [NB: we have no information on the font from the medieval chapel here, nor is it known whether the chapel had baptismal rights and exercised them -- many chapels-of-ease did in medieval England].

REFERENCES

Victoria County History [online], University of London, 1993-. Accessed: 2012-11-15 00:00:00. URL: https://www.british-history.ac.uk.
Cooper, Charles, A village in Sussex: the history of Kingston-near-Lewes, London; New York: I.B. Tauris; Palgrave MacMillan, 2006