Braybrooke / Badebroc / Baiebroc / Bradebroc / Braybrook

There are seven entries for Braybrook [variant spelling] in the Domesday survey [http://domesdaymap.co.uk/place/SP7684/braybrooke/] [accessed 25 October 2014], but neither mentions a cleric or church in it. The font here is illustrated in a sepia photograph of 1893 by A.J. Smith, now in the Sir Henry Dryden Collection, Northamptonshire [NB: the photograph is labelled "Market Harborough", the nearby town]. Described and illustrated in Bond (1908) as an example of a square basin converted into octagonal by trimming off the corners; the pedestal is dated to the 15th century; he also informs that it has a mermaid motif on it. Noted in Mee (1945): "The font is a remarkable piece of Norman work on a 15th century pedestal, the bowl beeing cut with curious intertwining snakes and various other designs, among which we noticed an odd figure of a mermaid eating a fish." In Pevsner & Cherry (1973): "Square, Norman, with rosettes, beaded intertwined monsters, and, on one side the incongruous combination of a cross and by its side a figure holding two fishes and placed horizontally, not vertically. How can such a thing be explained?" Described and illustrated in the CRSBI (2014): "At W end of S nave aisle. The font has a square 12thc. sandstone bowl with the angles chamfered off, apparently later, the chamfers with chamfer-stops at the top. The basin is circular and lead lined. It stands on a later octagonal shaft and base, dated by Bond to the 15thc. Each face of the bowl is carved with a different design as follows: E face: A complex interlace of four intertwined serpents, their heads at the four corners of the rectangular field, and their bodies, decorated with beading, tangling and recrossing to make their tortuous route to the central vertical axis, where they are bound in a pair of grooved annulets, one above the other. At the right and left edges of the field are flowers with a beaded bud between a pair of furled leaves. Scattered in the interstices of the coiled serpents are small pellets. The field has a band of two-strand guilloche with pellets between the strands at top and bottom. This presumably formed a frame on all four sides before the angles were chamfered. N face: A knotwork design of flat fillets consisting of a central ring with a compass-drawn four-petalled flower intersecting it. The four spandrels of the knot contain fan-shaped fluted leaves with scalloped edges, and the petals contain beading. At the four corners of the rectangular field are further fan-shaped leaves, and in the centre of each vertical side a trilobed leaf, the lobes decorated with rows of beading. The field was originally framed by a row of beading, which survives only at top and bottom. W face: The rectangular field is almost filled by a pair of confronted palmettes with multiple, hook-ended lobes. Between them at the top is a mass of beading, like a bunch of grapes, and at the bottom a small triangular palmette framed by its own stems. The border survives in part to the right as well as at top and bottom, and consists of a row of sawtooth pointing inwards, with a nebuly outer edge. S face: The field is divided into two by a vertical fillet. To the left is a siren with a curved fish's tail with scales and a female head and arms. She is shown in left profile, holding a fish to her mouth in her left hand. Her nose is long and pointed, her lips closed, and her eye almond-shaped with the lower lid chamfered. She has straight hair hanging down her back in a plait. She is carved sideways, that is with her head towards the bottom of the font. The right field is occupied by a cross of the type sometimes called baptismal, on a three-step base. The double field is framed with a two-stand cable, plain and beaded. The framing survives at top, bottom and left. The bowl has a large horizontal crack right across the centre of the west face and extending into the north and south faces. There are gypsum plaster repairs at the NE and NW angles of the rim, and lock damage at the SW angle. [...] This must be compared with the earlier font at Aston-le-Walls, which is also square with a different design on each face. The only shared design, however, is the knotwork and this is not identical. Pevsner finds the conjunction of cross and siren on the S face incongruous. The siren, however, provided the most popular shorthand for the allurements of the world tempting mankind into sin and damnation; while the baptismal cross offered a road to salvation, through the sacrament the font was designed to perform." On-site notes: the Norman basin appears to have been originally a regular square volume but later had its corners cut without respect for the ornamentation; the bottom part of the basin also appears cut off, as if there had been a chamfer there before; one of the sides has a very intricate vermicular interlace of four serpents whose bodies resemble beaded tape; the second side (L->R) has a large quatrefoil inside a circle, all angle spaces filled with a palmette motif; the third side has two large palm leaf motif; the fourth side is divided into two uneven rectangles: the left depicts a mermaid -tail up and head down- eating a fish, while the rectangle on the right has a Latin cross of very wide pattee arms on a three-step plinth; the pedestal base is octagonal and of later date.