Coton No. 1

No individual entry for this Coton found in the Domesday survey. A font here is illustrated in a lithograph by H.I. Hodgson of a sketch done by Henry E.L. Dryden in 1837, now in the Sir Henry Dryden Collection, Northamptonshire. Described in Paley's Guide (1844): "The font is square Norman, on a circular stem; a rude and singular piece of workmanship." Cox & Harvey (1907) includes the noteworthy baptismal font at Coton among the best Norman fonts in the county. Noted in Kelly's Directory of 1929: "the font, of Norman work, consists of a square basin on a circular stem". Noted and illustrated in the RCHM (Cambrigeshire, 1968): "[...] supported on five modern legs; 12th-century". The Victoria County History (Cambridge..., vol. 5, 1973) notes: "In the 12th and 13th centuries there does not appear to have been more than a nave and chancel, at least the chancel having walls of jurassic limestone. Also of the 12th century is the font, rudely carved with arcading, removed in the 19th century from the south aisle to the tower." Described and illustrated in the Cambridgeshire Churches (2005) : "the font sitting under the thin tower arch. It’s a Norman font - square bowl sitting on top of later pillars. The north face is decorated with diamonds and chevrons, and the other four with different types of blind arcade. The southern one is cheerfully lopsided, with pillars at alarming angles and arches of wildly different shapes. The most interesting, though, is the western face, which is decorated with three big arches, each of which is filled by close-set vertical lines. I wonder if this was just an artistic device for filling up blank space, or whether it is supposed to represent something? If so, I had difficulty working out what it could be: it looks like either a palisade or a screen, but the former would never have appeared in a church, and the latter wouldn’t have appeared until a couple of centuries after the font was carved." The basin rests now [October 2007] on four additional colonnettes which may be part of the restoration efforts of the Cambridge Camden Society, as reported in The Gentleman's Magazine issue of July 1840 (p. 77).