Flaxley

Image copyright © John Wilkes, 2007
Standing permission
Results: 3 records
view of church exterior - southeast view
view of church exterior in context

Scene Description: Source caption: "Flaxley Abbey. This old Cistercian abbey was founded between 1148 - 1154 by Roger, Earl of Hereford, at the spot where his father, Miles of Gloucester, was killed whilst out hunting. After the Dissolution in 1536 - 7 its lands and manor were granted to Sir William Kingston, the Constable of the Tower of London (who supervised the execution of Ann Boleyn)."
Copyright Statement: Image copyright © Tony Bailay, 2006
Image Source: digital photograph taken 21 April 2006 by Tony Bailay [www.geograph.org.uk/photo/156154] [accessed 12 December 2018]
Copyright Instructions: CC-BY-SA-2.0
INFORMATION
FontID: 01310FLA
Church/Chapel: Parish Church of St. Mary the Virgin
Church Patron Saints: St. Mary the Virgin
Church Location: address and coordinates of the modern church: Flaxley Rd, Flaxley GL14 1JR, UK
Country Name: England
Location: Gloucestershire, South West
Directions to Site: Located off (N) the A48 and the Severn, 5 km NE of Newnham, 18 km WSW of Gloucester
Ecclesiastic Region: Diocese of Gloucester
Historical Region: Hundred of St. Briavels
Century and Period: , Medieval
Credit and Acknowledgements: We are grateful to John Wilkes, of www.allthecotswolds.com, for the photographs of this church and font.
Font Notes: Click to view font notes
No individual entry found for Flaxley in the Domesday survey. The entry for this parish in the Victoria County History (Gloucester, vol. 5, 1996) reports on a complicated situation in which the old abbey here "sought a licence in 1253 to hold services in a new chapel before the abbey gate"; by 1650 it had become a vicarage, and "By 1839 it was called a perpetual curacy and by 1870 more usually a vicarage", but the building itself appears to have to have been abandoned at the Dissolution, and later replaced in a series of re-buildings that culminated in GG Scott's 1856 church dedicated to St. Mary, retaining a few fittings from the 18th-century re-buildings. The VCH entry makes no mention of a font of any of the above iterations of the chapel, or of the original chapel itself, though there must have been one there to warrant the 'vicarage' title. Verey & Brooks (1999-2002) note: "Font. Very elaborate; round bowl of Painswick stone with almost detached Serpentine marble angle shafts." Baptismal font of the 19th century but made on the late-Norman/Transitional design of the Bodmin-type; the rendition is, however, characteristically Victorian, down to the coloured marble colonnettes. [NB: perhaps by G.G, Scott, responsible for the mid-19th century renovation of the church]. [NB: it is possible that the nearby Abbey of the Blessed Virgin Mary, founded ca. 1150, may have had a baptismal font in its church, as mosty medieval abbey churches did, but we have no information on that font]
COORDINATES
Church Latitude & Longitude Decimal:
51.8358,
-2.4535
Church Latitude & Longitude DMS:
51° 50′ 8.88″ N,
2° 27′ 12.6″ W
UTM: 30U 537654 5742917
MEDIUM AND MEASUREMENTS
Material:
stone
Font Shape: cauldron-shaped (mounted)
Basin Interior Shape: round
Basin Exterior Shape: round
LID INFORMATION
Date: 19th century?
Apparatus: no
REFERENCES
Victoria County History [online], University of London, 1993-. Accessed: 2018-12-12 00:00:00. URL: https://www.british-history.ac.uk.
Verey, David, Gloucestershire, London: Penguin Books, 1999-2002