English leadwork : its art & history / Lawrence Weaver.

  • Lawrence Weaver
Date:
1909
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: English leadwork : its art & history / Lawrence Weaver. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    44/294 (page 22)
    and of the High Priest, both of villainous mien. Herod is crowned, and Caiaphas wears a mitre and a spiky beard. With regard to the vessel at Lewes Castle (Fig. 33), it is probably Anglo-Saxon. The evidence of its use as a font is slender, in fact confined to the existence of a cross in the triangle of ornament. There are the remains of iron handles; which seem to show that it was not an ossuary, a reliquary, or a stoup. It may have been a salt-cellar, but its use must remain conjectural. Another vessel at Maidstone Museum was dredged from the Medway some years ago. It is rather damaged, and it also had iron handles. The decoration is mystifying. It has a classical feeling, and might be Romano-British. At such a date, however, the river was the font, as objection was taken to still water for baptism. To the early Christians running streams were as the rivers of living water. In any case for so early a date the font would be too small. If it is to be saved as a font, a later date must be assigned. Perhaps it is of early Norman date, but it is an altogether vague and dubious object. There remains the chance of its being post-Reformation (an anti-climax after talk of Romano-British). Some years ago Mr Roach Smith described a lead vessel found at Felixstowe which he thought belonged to the tenth century. It had lost its rim, but seems to have retained some traces of two or three flanges. It was 6 inches high, 31 inches in circumference, and had an iron handle. There were four ornaments on the outside, each being a stiff-stalked plant with leaves and flowers at its base, and also two branches, each like the central stem, ending in three leaves. The majority of stone fonts were lined with lead, and it is reasonable to assume that some such linings were decoratively treated as has been done by Mr Bankart on the inside of some modern lead fonts which are illustrated in a later chapter. None seems, however, to have been recorded. On the outside of a discarded stone font preserved in the church of Waldron, Sussex, there is an incision of about 8 inches in length. In the upper part of this are small holes which may have served to secure a lead inscription, such as is found in some mediaeval tombstones, and as remains of lead were found inside the basin, this theory is probably correct. It has been stated that the font at Chobham, Surrey, is of lead with wooden panels. It cam only be described as of lead in the same way that any lead-lined wood font would be. The bowl is entirely cased in, and it is impossible to say whether the outside of the lead is decorated. For this reason it has been excluded from the list. In the writing of this chapter the author has to express his great debt to Dr Alfred Fryer, F.S.A. Without his help, both in counsel and in illustration, it would have been very incompletely clone. The least that can be done is to make clear (it is common knowledge to those whose hands are grimy with the dust of archaeological “ Proceedings ”) that Dr Fryer’s excursions into the history of fonts in general are typical of all that is best in the study of our national antiquities.