Preston St. Mary

There is one entry for this Preston in the Domesday survey [http://domesdaymap.co.uk/place/TM2446/preston/] [accessed 16 February 2015], but it mentions neither cleric nor church in it. Parker (1855) notes: "The font is early; it has a square bowl on an octagon pedestal." [NB: the font has now [July 2000] a five-column base and stands on a rectangular plinth]. Described and illustrated in Bond (1908) who suggests that the elaborate interlacings of the type found in the Preston font -a group of North-West Norfolk fonts which include those at Sculthorpe, Shernborne, South Wootton and Toftrees- should be regarded as "survivals of Anglo-Saxon or Celtic traditions of design". Bond (ibid.), however, writes that the Preston font "seems to be a clumsy copy based on these". Listed in Cautley (1982) as a baptismal font of the 12th century. Noted and illustrated in Knott (2008): "the font, which, although typically square Norman, has pretty little designs, as though its maker was already infected with ideas of Decoration to come. It is tucked into the west end of the north aisle". Illustrated in Cautley (1938) and James (1930). Drake (2002) notes similarities with the fonts at Sculthorpe and Toftrees. Described and illustrated in the CRSBI (2008): "an important early Romanesque font […] The box-shaped bowl stands on a 19thc. neo-Romanesque support consisting of a central octagonal shaft and four elaborate shafts with capitals and spurred bases at the corners. The support stands on a modern step. The bowl is monolithic and carved with heavy angle shafts with double-scallop capitals, sometimes with wedges between the cones, and square neckings. Of the tall shaft bases, those at the SE and SW are best preserved and consist of a bulbous roll with a hollow above". The CRSBI (ibid.) proceeds to give a detailed description of the decoration on each of the four sides of the basin, and suggests "a date in the first two decades of the 12thc". The CRSBI entry for Poslingford [http://www.crsbi.ac.uk/ed/sf/posli/index.htm] [accessed 22 June 2008] notes: "Motifs similar to those on the S doorway tympanum are found on the font at Preston St Mary, 11 miles to the E". On-site notes: mounted square font from the Norman period; the sides of the font are covered in decoration, each with a different pattern and separated by columns at the corners: 1)a floral pattern in the centre is framed by deeply-cut 6-point clusters motifs; 2)a plant with many branches ending in curlicues and fleurs-de-lys is framed in a plain rectangle and further framed in a rope moulding motif; 3)a quatrefoil-in-a-circle interlace at the centre is flaked by two dog-tooth or four-point stars on each side, a broad band of braid interlace above, and a vine with dots in the blanks at the bottom; 4)a blind arcade with six intersecting thin round arches resting on as many very tall columns. The base is a modern reconstruction: a central plain octagonal column with four non-constructional colonnettes at the corners; the latter have well-defined capitals and bases and the body of the columns have spiralling dotted tape ornamentation. The whole rests on a modern rectangular plinth. The font shows signs of damage: the basin appears to have cracked right trough towards the bottom and has been repaired; further repairs show at the upper rim, some areas with new-stone insert at spots where anchoring hardware for the old cover may have split the stone.