St. Germans / Saint Germans

Standing permission

Results: 12 records

Click to view images and/or subjects

animal - bird - dove

Scene Description: Image order may be wrong

design element - motifs - circle

Scene Description: Image order may be wrong

design element - motifs - foliage - 3

Scene Description: on one visible side of the basin; arranged in quatrefoil manner

Image Source: digital image of an engraving by Orlando Jewitt in Paley (1844: unpaged)

Copyright Instructions: PD

design element - motifs - semicircle (upper row inverted over the lower row)

Scene Description: on one side

Image Source: digital photograph taken by David Ross, in Britain Express Ltd. [www.britainexpress.com/images/attractions/editor/St-Germans-2066.jpg] [accessed 21 July 2016]

Copyright Instructions: Standing permission

symbol - vesica piscis

Scene Description: a/p Paley's identification

symbol - vesica piscis

Scene Description: a/p Paley's identification

view of church exterior - south view

Image Source: digital photograph taken 22 February 2011 by Nilfanion [https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:St_Germans_Church.jpg] [accessed 21 July 2016]

Copyright Instructions: CC-BY-SA-3.0

view of church exterior - west portal

Image Source: digital photograph taken 22 February 2011 by Nilfanion [https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:St_Germans_Church_west_door.jpg] [accessed 21 July 2016]

Copyright Instructions: CC-BY-SA-3.0

view of church exterior in context - northwest view

Image Source: digital photograph taken 18 May 2009 by Ian Buchanan [https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Stgermanschurchwestfront.JPG] [accessed 21 July 2016]

Copyright Instructions: CC-BY-SA-3.0

view of church interior - nave - looking east

Scene Description: showing the north aisle as well as the nave

Image Source: digital photograph taken 22 February 2011 by Nilfanion [https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:St_Germans_Church_interior.jpg] [accessed 21 July 2016]

Copyright Instructions: CC-BY-SA-3.0

view of font

Scene Description: engraved by Thomas Orlando Sheldon Jewitt (1799–1869), aka Orlando Jewitt; the artist's signature appears below the font, to the right, in the initials OJ -- the moulded lower base is missing in this illustration; it must have been discovered and added later

Image Source: digital image of an engraving by Orlando Jewitt in Paley (1844: unpaged)

Copyright Instructions: PD

view of font and cover

Scene Description: the moulded lower base seen here does not appear on Paley's illustration

Image Source: digital photograph taken by David Ross, in Britain Express Ltd. [www.britainexpress.com/images/attractions/editor/St-Germans-2066.jpg] [accessed 21 July 2016]

Copyright Instructions: Standing permission

INFORMATION

FontID: 01450GER

Church/Chapel: Parish [former priory] Church of St. Germans

Church Patron Saints: St. Germanus of Auxerre [aka Germans, German, Germain]

Country Name: England

Location: Cornwall, South West

Directions to Site: Located SW of Saltash, but access is from the W, via either the A38 from the N, or the A374 from the S

Ecclesiastic Region: Diocese of Truro

Font Location in Church: Inside the church, in the W end, near the tower door [cf. FontNotes]

Century and Period: 12th century (late?), Late Norman

Credit and Acknowledgements: We are grateful to David Ross, of Britain Express Ltd., for his photograph of this font

Church Notes: original church may have been 5thC; documented 19thC; Augustinian priory 12thC;

Font Notes: Click to view font notes

According to Paley (1844), the font at St. Germans was smashed ca. 1790 and replaced by another in alabaster; around 1840, the then incumbent, Rev. Tobias Furneaux, had all the pieces of the old font "collected from among the rubbish in the tower" and "had the pieces cimented together" with the pillars of the base restored in granite. The two sides of the basin visible in Paley's illustration shows 1)leaf motifs and 2)semi-circle motifs . Paley (ibid.) reports the spandrels of the upper surface as having "Christian emblems, in one the dove, in another the circle, and in the other two, the vesica piscis", but they are not visible in his illustration. Murray's Handbook for travellers […] (1865) mentions the location of a Norman font in this church: "In the E arch of the S tower", and refers to the illustration by Paley. Listed in Cox & Harvey (1907) as a Norman font. Cox (1912) lists this as one of a group of Cornish fonts made from Dorsetshire Purbeck limestone [NB: though later in the same source identifies it as "Tintagel Greenstone"]. Cox (ibid.) writes: "The most interesting detail of the interior is the fine late Norm[an] font of Purbeck marble, broken up and discarded in 1793. The fragments were, however, replaced in 1840. The font, 33 in. square, and 39 in. high, has the 4 angles round the bowl at the top of the font filled with 3 three-leaved ornaments in slight relief and a circle or ring in fourth angle. N. side of bowl is carved .with a round-headed arcade, and the other sides have much-worn patterns; it stands on a central and four subsidiary shafts." Listed in Tyrrell-Green (1928) as a good specimen from a group of fonts "charateristic of the Norman period in architecture [...] consisting of a rectangular bowl upon a large central shaft, with four slender supporting shafts at the angles". Noted in Pevsner: "Font. Of Purbeck marble, c.1200, badly preserved." Illustrated in A Snap in Time [www.caerkief.co.uk/Churches/Germans.html] [accessed 16 November 2009]. Noted in Leach (1975) as a font made of Purbeck marble: "bowl with panels on one face, foliage decoration on two and half circles surmounted by reversed half circles on the fourth; part of the base and the subsiduary shafts are modern" [source given: Pevsner, Cornwall, 1951].

COORDINATES

Church Latitude & Longitude Decimal: 50.397, -4.309

Church Latitude & Longitude DMS: 50° 23′ 49.2″ N, 4° 18′ 32.4″ W

UTM: 30U 406964 5583591

MEDIUM AND MEASUREMENTS

Material: stone, mixed stones [originally of limestone (Dorsetshire Purbeck)? / Tintagel greenstone?]

Font Shape: square (mounted)

Basin Interior Shape: round

Basin Exterior Shape: square

Basin Depth: 25 cm

Font Height (with Plinth): 105 cm** / 97.5 cm***

Trapezoidal Basin: 82.5 x 82.5 cm* / cm***

Notes on Measurements: *Paley's measurement is "diameter across the top=2 ft. 9 in. -- **Paley's measurement is for height "including the basement" -- Paley (1844: unpaged) *** [in inches in Cox (1912)]

LID INFORMATION

Date: modern

Material: wood, oak?

Apparatus: no

Notes: round and flat with a Latin-cross finial/handle; modern

REFERENCES

Cox, John Charles, Cornwall, London: George Allen & Company, 1912

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

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

Murray, John, A handbook for travellers in Devon and Cornwall, London: John Murray, 1865

Paley, Frederick Apthorp, Illustrations of Baptismal Fonts, London, UK: John van Voorst, 1844

Pevsner, Nikolaus, Cornwall, Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1970

Tyrrell-Green, E., Baptismal Fonts Classified and Illustrated, London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge: The Macmillan Co., 1928