Houghton Regis / Houstone / Houton

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Results: 22 records

Click to view images and/or subjects

design element - motifs - foliage

Scene Description: on at least one side of the scalloped lower base

Image Source: etching "drawn and etched by Thomas Fisher 1836", in Lysons

Copyright Instructions: PD

design element - motifs - foliage - varied

Scene Description: a band of individual foliage motifs, very ornate; the motifs are separated by vertical torsade or rope mouldings -- Source caption: "A side view of the wonderful C12th "Aylesbury" font in All Saints, Houghton Regis. The main pattern at the top here seems to have something of a Celtic influence. Note the somewhat wavy perimeter of the bowl."

Image Source: digital photograph taken 13 June 2014 by Rob Farrow [www.geograph.org.uk/photo/4024990] [accessed 22 September 2015]

Copyright Instructions: CC-BY-SA-2.0

design element - motifs - moulding

Scene Description: an angular moulding protrudes significantly at the bottom of the basin

Image Source: digital photograph taken 13 June 2014 by Rob Farrow [www.geograph.org.uk/photo/4024987] [accessed 22 September 2015]

Copyright Instructions: CC-BY-SA-2.0

design element - motifs - moulding

Scene Description: at the angles of the large scallops of the base: some roll, some rope

Image Source: digital photograph taken 13 June 2014 by Rob Farrow [www.geograph.org.uk/photo/4024987] [accessed 22 September 2015]

Copyright Instructions: CC-BY-SA-2.0

design element - motifs - palmette

Scene Description: a band of, just above the fluting

Image Source: digital photograph taken 13 June 2014 by Rob Farrow [www.geograph.org.uk/photo/4024990] [accessed 22 September 2015]

Copyright Instructions: CC-BY-SA-2.0

design element - motifs - rope moulding

Scene Description: at the bottom of the very short stem of the base

Image Source: digital photograph taken 13 June 2014 by Rob Farrow [www.geograph.org.uk/photo/4024987] [accessed 22 September 2015]

Copyright Instructions: CC-BY-SA-2.0

design element - motifs - scallop - 4

Scene Description: a large one forms each side of the lower base

Image Source: digital photograph taken 13 June 2014 by Rob Farrow [www.geograph.org.uk/photo/4024987] [accessed 22 September 2015]

Copyright Instructions: CC-BY-SA-2.0

design element - patterns - fluted

Image Source: digital photograph taken 13 June 2014 by Rob Farrow [www.geograph.org.uk/photo/4024987] [accessed 22 September 2015]

Copyright Instructions: CC-BY-SA-2.0

view of base - detail

Image Source: B&W photograph by Hazel Gardiner, in the CRSBI [www.crsbi.ac.uk/site/1220/] [accessed 22 September 2015

Copyright Instructions: PERMISSION NOT AVAILABLE -- IMAGE NOT FOR PUBLIC USE

view of base - detail

Image Source: B&W photograph by Hazel Gardiner, in the CRSBI [www.crsbi.ac.uk/site/1220/] [accessed 22 September 2015

Copyright Instructions: PERMISSION NOT AVAILABLE -- IMAGE NOT FOR PUBLIC USE

view of base - detail

Image Source: B&W photograph by Hazel Gardiner, in the CRSBI [www.crsbi.ac.uk/site/1220/] [accessed 22 September 2015

Copyright Instructions: PERMISSION NOT AVAILABLE -- IMAGE NOT FOR PUBLIC USE

view of base - detail

Image Source: B&W photograph by Hazel Gardiner, in the CRSBI [www.crsbi.ac.uk/site/1220/] [accessed 22 September 2015

Copyright Instructions: PERMISSION NOT AVAILABLE -- IMAGE NOT FOR PUBLIC USE

view of basin - detail

Image Source: B&W photograph by Hazel Gardiner, in the CRSBI [www.crsbi.ac.uk/site/1220/] [accessed 22 September 2015

Copyright Instructions: PERMISSION NOT AVAILABLE -- IMAGE NOT FOR PUBLIC USE

view of basin - detail

Image Source: B&W photograph by Hazel Gardiner, in the CRSBI [www.crsbi.ac.uk/site/1220/] [accessed 22 September 2015

Copyright Instructions: PERMISSION NOT AVAILABLE -- IMAGE NOT FOR PUBLIC USE

view of basin - detail

Image Source: B&W photograph by Hazel Gardiner, in the CRSBI [www.crsbi.ac.uk/site/1220/] [accessed 22 September 2015

Copyright Instructions: PERMISSION NOT AVAILABLE -- IMAGE NOT FOR PUBLIC USE

view of basin - detail

Image Source: B&W photograph by Hazel Gardiner, in the CRSBI [www.crsbi.ac.uk/site/1220/] [accessed 22 September 2015

Copyright Instructions: PERMISSION NOT AVAILABLE -- IMAGE NOT FOR PUBLIC USE

view of basin - detail

Image Source: B&W photograph by Hazel Gardiner, in the CRSBI [www.crsbi.ac.uk/site/1220/] [accessed 22 September 2015

Copyright Instructions: PERMISSION NOT AVAILABLE -- IMAGE NOT FOR PUBLIC USE

view of basin - detail

Image Source: B&W photograph by Hazel Gardiner, in the CRSBI [www.crsbi.ac.uk/site/1220/] [accessed 22 September 2015

Copyright Instructions: PERMISSION NOT AVAILABLE -- IMAGE NOT FOR PUBLIC USE

view of church exterior - south view

Image Source: digital photograph taken 2 January 2014 by Bikeboy [www.geograph.org.uk/photo/3799366] [accessed 22 September 2015]

Copyright Instructions: CC-BY-SA-2.0

view of church interior - nave - looking east

Scene Description: Source caption: "The chancel of All Saints, Houghton Regis leading to the altar, and behind that the plain East Window. In former times this window would have been filled with mediæval stained glass, no doubt removed and destroyed by the iconoclasts of the C17th under Cromwell."

Image Source: digital photograph taken 13 June 2014 by Rob Farrow [www.geograph.org.uk/photo/4076215] [accessed 22 September 2015]

Copyright Instructions: CC-BY-SA-2.0

view of font

Image Source: digital photograph taken 13 June 2014 by Rob Farrow [www.geograph.org.uk/photo/4024987] [accessed 22 September 2015]

Copyright Instructions: CC-BY-SA-2.0

view of font

Image Source: B&W photograph by Hazel Gardiner, in the CRSBI [www.crsbi.ac.uk/site/1220/] [accessed 22 September 2015

Copyright Instructions: PERMISSION NOT AVAILABLE -- IMAGE NOT FOR PUBLIC USE

INFORMATION

FontID: 01241HOU

Church/Chapel: Paris church of All Saints [aka St. Michael's]

Church Patron Saints: All Saints / St. Michael? [Crockford's gives All Saints -- the Kelly's Directory of 1898 has "St. Michael, formerly All Saints"]

Church Location: High Street, Houghton Regis, Bedfordshire, LU5 5DJ

Country Name: England

Location: Bedfordshire, East

Directions to Site: Located on the A5, N of Dunstable, 6-7 km W of Luton, 25 km ENE of Aylsbury

Ecclesiastic Region: Diocese of St. Albans

Historical Region: Hundred of Manshead

Font Location in Church: Inside the church

Century and Period: 12th - 13th century, Late Norman / Transitional?

Workshop/Group/Artisan: Aylesbury group?

Cognate Fonts: Eydon; derivative of Aylesbury? -- also Dunstable (which appears to be a copy of this one) [cf. FontNotes]

Credit and Acknowledgements: We are grateful to the Thomas Fisher Rare Books Library for access to the copy of Lysons’ Magna Britannia, and to Jim Ingram, of the Preservation Services, Robarts Library, for the digital imaging of Lysons’ illustrations.

Font Notes: Click to view font notes

There is an entry for Houghton [Regis] [variant spelling] in the Domesday survey [http://opendomesday.org/place/TL0123/houghton-regis/] [accessed 22 September 2015]; it mentions a church and half a hide of church lands in it. A font here is noted and illustrated in Lysons (1806-1833) as one of a group of circular fonts, this one decorated with "various mouldings and foliage." Described in Kelly's Directory of 1898 [as cited in the GENUKI site]: "the Norman font is cylindrical, widening towards the top, and the whole exterior is richly carved in three bands, the lowermost being fluted; the base is cushioned, with cable moulding". Noted in Cox & Harvey (1907) as a fine baptismal font of the Norman period. Described in Bond (1908) as a Norman chalice font "evidently from the same hand" as the font at Eydon, in Northamptonshire; the fluted basin has scrollwork round the rim, while the part of the basin "takes the form of an inverted cushion capital, and contains panels of conventional foliage" (ibid.), on which evidence Bond dates it to the "closing years of the twelfth, or the first years of the thirteenth century. The Victoria County History (Bedfordshire, vol. 3, 1912) notes: "The church of Houghton Regis was held in 1086 by William the Chamberlain [...] The font belongs to a late 12th-century type, of which there are several examples in Buckinghamshire, as at Aylesbury and Weston Turville; the bowl is circular and the base square, taking the form of a large inverted scalloped capital." Noted in Pevsner (1968): "Font. Of tub shape; Norman. The base is in the form of a flat single-scallop capital with carved lunettes. The bowl is fluted; two bands of decoration." Stockner (1997) lists it as the only font from the Aylesbury group outside of Buckinghamshire [Houghton Regis is only 25 km ENE of Aylesbury]. Noted and illustrated in the CRSBI (2015): "the only 12thc. carved feature is the font [...] Houghton Regis font has many features in common with that at nearby Dunstable (although the Dunstable font is substantially restored)". [NB: is the Dunstable font a restoration, as claimed by some, or a replica of this font?]

COORDINATES

Church Latitude & Longitude Decimal: 51.9049, -0.5211

Church Latitude & Longitude DMS: 51° 54′ 17.64″ N, 0° 31′ 15.96″ W

UTM: 30U 670526 5753365

MEDIUM AND MEASUREMENTS

Material: stone, limestone?

Font Shape: chalice-shaped

Basin Interior Shape: round

Basin Exterior Shape: round

REFERENCES

Victoria County History [online], University of London, 1993-. Accessed: 2007-11-04 00:00:00. URL: https://www.british-history.ac.uk.

Bond, Francis, Fonts and Font Covers, London: Waterstone, 1985 c1908

Corpus of Romanesque Sculpture in Britain and Ireland, The Corpus of Romanesque Sculpture in Britain and Ireland, The Corpus of Romanesque Sculpture in Britain and Ireland. Accessed: 2015-09-22 00:00:00. URL: http://www.crsbi.ac.uk.

Cox, John Charles, English Church Furniture, New York: E.P. Dutton & Co., 1907

Kelly, Kelly's Directory for Bedfordshire, London: Kelly's Directories Ltd., 1898

Lysons, Daniel, Magna Britannia, being a concise topographical account of the several counties of Great Britain, London: Printed for T. Cadell and W. Davies, 1806-1822

Pevsner, Nikolaus, Bedfordshire and the County of Huntingdon and Peterborough, Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1968

Stocker, D.A., "Fons et origo: The Symbolic Death and Resurrection of English Font Stones", I (1997b), Church Archaeology, 1997, pp. 17-25; r["References"]