Guyhirn

The entry for St. Mary Magdalen's in English Heritage [Listing NGR: TF3975503296] (1983) notes: "Font. Tapering octagonal bowl in early English style on a Purbeck marble stem with eight subsidiary detached shafts, also of marble and each with moulded capital and base." [NB: is this an early font? [cf. infra]]. The Victoria County History (Cambridge..., vol. 4, 2002) notes: "The chapel of Guyhirn originated in a chantry founded in 1337 by John de Reddik [...] licensed for public worship by Bishop Fordham in 1398 [...] served by a curate appointed by the Vicar of Wisbech until 1878, when Guyhirn was made a separate ecclesiastical district and the patronage vested in the Bishop of Ely. [...] The old church of ST. MARY MAGDALENE, GUYHIRN, consists of a simple parallelogram without any structural division and an open timber bell-cote on the west end of the roof. It is built of ashlar except the west wall and the upper part of the north wall, which are of brick. The roof is now covered with blue slates, but formerly with stone slates. It was erected in 1660 and this date appears over the south doorway. The present building replaced a medieval building on a different site. Since 1878, when a new church was erected about half a mile to the west, the old structure has served as a mortuary chapel. It was repaired in 1918, and is an interesting example of 17th-century Gothic. [...] There is a small modern stone font on a wooden base. [...] The modern church of St. Mary Magdalene consists of chancel, north vestry, south chapel, nave, south porch, and west bell-cote. The material is brick and the roofs are tiled. It was erected in 1878 from designs by Sir Gilbert Scott and is a particularly bad example of Victorian Gothic. It stands on, or near, the site of the medieval chapel and fragments of carved and moulded stones, now in the vicarage garden, were discovered when digging the foundations. All the fittings are modern." [NB: "the chapel of Corpus Christi at Murrow [...] founded in or before 1376" appears to have been a family chapel that had service held in it only once a year; a new church was built in Murrow in 1857; the old chapel does not appear to have had baptismal or burial rights -- VCH (ibid.)]