Ackworth No. 2 / Acevvurde / Ackworth Moor Top

There is an entry for [High and Low] Ackworth [variant spelling] in the Domesday survey [http://opendomesday.org/place/XX0000/high-and-low-ackworth/] [accessed 23 October 2018]; it reports a priest and a church in it. Noted in Smith (1881): "The font, like numerous others in our neighbourhood, bears date shortly after the restoration of the Stuarts -- 1663. Thomas Bradley, D.D., the then rector, besides inscribing the fact of setting it up, records on it that it had been thrown out in the war of the Fanatics (Bello Phanaticorum)." Octagonal mounted font which Bond (1908) describes as having an inscription with "an echo of the Civil War on the eights panel of ther font"; he refers to the inscription which dates from 1663 and gives the name of the rector, Thomas Bradley. The inscription states that the font is newly built in 1663 to replace the destruction by the bile of the fanatics, bile which Bond annotates as "the splenetic choler" ["Baptisterium bili phanaticorum diru[p]tum denuo erectum..."]. Also in Tyrrell-Green (1928) with same text. Cox & Harvey (1907) give a slightly different rendition of the inscription, with the second word transcribed as "bello", not "bili"; they list the font as Restoration, dated 1663 as well. Morris (1932) gives the full inscription: "Baptisterium bello phanaticorum dirutum denuo erectum. Tho. Bradley, D.D., Rectore, H.A.T.C. Gardianis, 1663". In Betjeman (1958): "Inscribed Restoration font." In Pevsner (1986): "Font. 1663. Octagonal, with plain inscriptions." Harman & Pevsner (2017) report a font "dated 1663. Small, octagonal, with plain mouldings and inscriptions" in the south aisle. The entry for this church in the CRSBI (2018) notes: "The only Romanesque sculpture present is a font which may originally have been of C12th date, but has been re-tooled and re-shaped. [...] At the base of the W tower is the bowl of a font, possibly of the C11th or C12th. It is carved from even-grained grey sandstone. Found in a garden where it had been used as a bird bath (Saywell et al., n.d., 2). It is rectangular in plan. The sides are approximately vertical and the lower corners roughly chamfered as if to fit an octagonal base or stem. The bowl now rests on an upturned quatrefoil base, which sits in turn on an octagonal base. There is no lead lining, but a drain and stopper are fitted in the bowl. [...] There are break marks on the rim in the centre of the longer sides. The rim is smooth and its angle has a narrow chamfer, clearest on the E and N faces. On the E and N sides, the upper parts are smooth with occasional random marks. On the W and S sides, the upper part has an incised line parallel to the top, apparently made by joining isolated punched holes. Most of this surface has been heavily re-tooled with a wide chisel, and indeed there are patches of different toolings throughout. The inside of the basin has a rough floor, and the sides show yet other toolmarks. [...] The fabric of the font, its rectangular shape, and the apparent definition of panels on the W and S faces recall the fonts at Skelmanthorpe and Cawthorne. The rough tooling on the flat floor of the basin resembles that on the font at Cawthorne. It is unlikely that any sculptural design was ever finished on this font. The fine diagonal lines on the W face, between the incised line and the rim, are probably early tooling. The crude chamfers on the lower corners are likely to be a C13th alteration. The smooth E and N faces, along with the chamfer most obvious on those sides, may have been a later attempt to neaten up the font. The broad heavy chiselling on the W and S sides looks like modern work to regularise an uneven surface.[...] A post-medieval font is currently in use at the church, situated near the S door. It is octagonal and bears a Latin inscription: ‘Baptisterium bello Phanaticorum dirutum, de nuovo erectum, Tho. Bradley D.D. rectore: H.A.; T.C. Gardianis 1663’, showing that it was re-erected by Thomas Bradley, a chaplain to Charles I." The local history web page [www.ackworth.w-yorks.sch.uk/ack/cuthbert.html] provides an English translation of the inscription [cf. Inscription notes below] and informs that "Thomas Bradley was a chaplain to Charles I. Expelled by the Parliamentary Committee in 1646 but restored to the living of Ackworth at the return of the Stuarts, he commemorated his return by restoring the font [...]". This latter source also states: "Under the tower there is a restored Norman font which was found in a garden where it had been used as a bird bath. The font now rests on part of a pillar from a former church." [cf. Index entries for Ackworth No. 1 (the destroyed font) and Ackworth No. 3 the Norman font under the tower]