Prince's Tower

Although this font is reported as being from Jersey, it is described in Walker's "Scottish Baptismal Fonts" *1887) as "showing the very unusual and peculiar combination (at least in this country) of a large basin with a small one inside it, cut out of the same stone." Walker adds (ibid.) that the large basin contained water and the small one possibly the holy oils [NB: as an alternative explanation, most double-well basins are used to keep the holy water in one and to collect the used water of the baptism in the other], and that the ornamentation of the octagonal basin is "very curious"; each panel has a different motif, very stylised, some resembling fish and/or arrows. Only the basin is accounted for in Walker. Described and illustrated in Bond (1908: 66 and ill. on p. 64) as having "a small bowl [...] hollowed inside the large bowl of the font proper"; the basin is octagonal with short and wide vertical basin sides, and a graded chamfer; the motifs on the basin sides are not common but stylistically they seem to belong with the rest of the design, probably to the 15th century. The base appears to be an irregular part of a tree trunk and obviously not the original one [description based on the illustration in Bond]. The font is mentioned in Tyrrell-Green (1928: 49) as one of the few fonts in Britain with a secondary basin.