St. Columb Major

Noted in Murray's Handbook for travellers […] (1865) as a baptismal font of the Early English period: "The font has grotesque faces, protruding tongues at each other, on the sides." Listed in Cox & Harvey (1907) as a noteworthy font example of the Decorated period. Noted in Cox (1912): "Octagonal font, with grotesque faces, is early I4th cent." Noted in Pevsner (1970): "Font, of c.1300, octagonal, with large crude faces on five sides in quatrefoils (four en face, one in profile) and tracery motifs otherwise." A recent photograph [cf. infra] shows an octagonal basin on the sides of which are carved different motifs; of the three sides visible in the photograph, the left has a Gothic window with arches and a cross motif in it; the centre panel has a large circle with a six-arm motif (six-petal flower?) inside it; on the right panel, a blind arch. The stem of the base is a broad cylindrical shaft with four clusters of constructional colonnettes, corresponding to every other side of the basin; the lower base is octagonal and plain. The plinth is octagonal and plain as well. The font cover is an octagonal lid with vertical sides of low rise, the upper part being hemispherical, of later date, probably 16th or 17th-century. [NB: the web site of Douglas Henwood [http://archiver.rootsweb.com] states that "The font is a 15th century copy of a Norman one", but does not provide any support for this statement]