Colchester No. 10 / Colecastro / Colecestra

There are seventeen entries for Colchester [variant spellings] in the Domesday survey [http://opendomesday.org/place/TL9925/colchester/] [accessed 8 June 2018]; a priest is mentioned as lord three times (two in 1066, one in 1086) and "0.5 church lands" is noted in one of the entries, but none of them mentions a church, though there must have some there at the time. The entry for this borough in the Victoria County History (Essex, vol. 9, 1994) notes: "The church may have been founded by Eudes the sewer in the 12th century as the chapel of St. Mary Magdalen's hospital, [...] but it had acquired parochial status by 1237 when the church, ecclesia, of St. Mary Magdalen was confirmed to St. John's abbey, and in 1254 the master of the hospital was rector of the church. [...] The hospital chapel had been destroyed before 1610, and the church needed repair in 1633. (fn. 467) After the siege in 1648 it was abandoned until 1721 when Thomas Parker, the Lord Chancellor, repaired it at his own expense. [...] In 1650 when Henry Barrington, a former mayor and a protestant extremist, was appointed master of the hospital, the living was left vacant and the church was used as a poorhouse. [...] The church seems to have remained in ruins and unused until 1721, when the Lord Chancellor appointed the first of a regular succession of rectors. [...] The church was demolished in 1852, and a new one, designed by F. Barnes in the decorated style, was built just to the south and consecrated in 1854"; no font is mentioned in the VCH entry for this church.