Long Melford / Melaforda

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Results: 8 records

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design element - architectural - arch or window - trefoiled - 16

Image Source: digital photograph taken 14 August 2010 by Peter Austin [aka pete-astn]

Copyright Instructions: Standing permission

design element - architectural - arch or window - trefoiled - 16

Scene Description: a pair on each side of the basin, one on each side of the shield panel; similar to the ones on the stem of the base

Image Source: digital photograph taken 14 August 2010 by Peter Austin [aka pete-astn]

Copyright Instructions: Standing permission

design element - motifs - moulding - graded

Image Source: digital photograph taken 14 August 2010 by Peter Austin [aka pete-astn]

Copyright Instructions: Standing permission

symbol - shield - in a cusped panel - 8

Scene Description: the shields may have been charged in the past [cf. FontNotes]

Image Source: digital photograph taken 14 August 2010 by Peter Austin [aka pete-astn]

Copyright Instructions: Standing permission

view of church exterior - southeast view

Image Source: digital photograph taken 18 September 2011 by Karen Roe [https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Long_Melford_is_a_large_village_and_civil_parish_in_the_county_of_Suffolk.jpg] [accessed 23 September 2020]

Copyright Instructions: CC-BY-2.0

view of font and cover

Image Source: digital photograph taken 14 August 2010 by Peter Austin [aka pete-astn]

Copyright Instructions: Standing permission

view of font and cover in context

Image Source: digital photograph by Mark Collins [http://www.roughwood.net/ChurchAlbum/Suffolk/LongMelford/LongMelfordHolyTrinity2005.htm] [accessed 9 Novemver 2009]

Copyright Instructions: Standing permission

view of font cover

Image Source: digital photograph taken 14 August 2010 by Peter Austin [aka pete-astn]

Copyright Instructions: Standing permission

INFORMATION

FontID: 01061LON

Church/Chapel: Parish Church of the Holy Trinity [aka St. Catherine's]

Church Patron Saints: The Holy Trinity [also St. Catherine?]

Church Location: Rectory Gardens, Long Melford, Sudbury CO10 9DT, UK -- Tel.: +44 1787 310845

Country Name: England

Location: Suffolk, East Anglia

Directions to Site: Located off {W) the B1064, W of the A134, 5 km N of Sudbury, 23 km from Bury St Edmunds

Ecclesiastic Region: Diocese of St Edmundsbury and Ipswich

Historical Region: Hundred of Babergh

Font Location in Church: Inside the church, in the penultimate (west) arch of the arcade of the nave

Century and Period: 15th century, Perpendicular

Credit and Acknowledgements: We are grateful to Mark Collins, of www.roughwood.net, and to Peter Austin [aka pete-astn] for their photographs of church and font

Church Notes: church documented here pre-1066; church built 1460-1495 on site of earlier -probably 14thC- church

Font Notes: Click to view font notes

There is an entry for [Long] Melford [variant spelling] in the Domesday survey [https://opendomesday.org/place/TL8646/long-melford/] [accessed 24 September 2020]; it reports "1 church. 2.0 church lands" in it. Parker (1855) notes simply: "Font, poor." William Parker, author of 'The history of Long Melford' (1873), reports that the "fine old font was under the gallery, and was covered with yellow paint" around 1868, when a decision was taken to renovated this church. Illustrated in Coook (1954). The entry for this church in Historic England [Listing NGR: TL8650946760] mentions no font in it. Listed in Leach (1975) as a font made of Purbeck marble [polygonal II type]; "simple example". The font consists of an octagonal basin decorated with a shield in a cusped panel flaked by a pair of trefoiled arches or windows on each side; the shields have been badly defaced but look as if they may have been charged originally; the underbowl is graded; stands on an octagonal stem decorated with pairs of trefoiled windows or arches like those on the basin; the lower base is splaing and plain; the font has been damaged on several areas, the worst damage around the upper rim, the defacing of the shields, cracks on the underbowl and general damage to the lower base. The tall pyramidal cover is impressive and well carved, probably Victorian; it has a running inscription on the lower moulded sides that mentions a Lt. Col. Robinson, churchwarden, probably the donor of the cover.

COORDINATES

Church Latitude & Longitude Decimal: 52.087575, 0.721019

Church Latitude & Longitude DMS: 52° 5′ 15.27″ N, 0° 43′ 15.67″ E

UTM: 31U 343862 5773229

MEDIUM AND MEASUREMENTS

Material: stone, limestone (Purbeck marble)

Font Shape: octagonal (mounted)

Basin Interior Shape: round

Basin Exterior Shape: octagonal

LID INFORMATION

Date: 19th-century?

Material: wood, oak

Apparatus: yes; pulley

Notes: octagonal and tall; openwork; Victorian? Gift of churchwarden? [cf. FontNotes]

REFERENCES

Cook, G.H., English Mediaeval Parish Church, London: Phoenix House, 1954

Leach, Rosemary, A Investigation into the use of Purbeck Marble in Medieval England, Hartlepool: E.W. Harrisons & Sons, 1975

Parker, John Henry, The Ecclesiastical and architectural topography of England [...] Suffolk, 1855

Parker, William, The History of Long Melford, London: Printed for the author by Wyman & Sons, 1873