Colchester No. 12 / 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 invocation to an obscure 7th-century Mercian child saint suggests an Anglo-Saxon or possibly early Norman origin. The position of the church, on an island site in the middle of High Street within an existing market place, and its detached graveyard suggest that it was one of the later ancient Colchester churches, founded after much of the central area had been built up. It may have started as a chapel and later acquired parochial status and burial rights. [...] The church of St. Runwald was probably built in the late 11th or early 12th century [...] In 1595 the church was in ruins, and it needed repair in 1633 [...] The church was in a poor condition again by the mid 19th century: the removal of the Middle Row shops in 1857 left the east end of the church exposed and damaged, the foundations at the west end were defective, and the building was an obstruction in the busy High Street. It was demolished in 1878.[...] The churchwardens in 1765-6 paid 10s. 6d. for a font, which may be the one described in 1856 as a new and well finished octagonal font; architectural evidence does not support the claim that the 15th-century font in Little Totham church in 1985 came from St. Runwald's."