Bowness-on-Solway / Boulness / Bouness / Bownes-by-Solway

No individual entry for Bowness found in the Domesday survey. Noted in Lysons (1806-1833) as one of several “fonts in the churches of Cumberland [Bowness, Aspatria, Cross-Canonby and Dearham] which may be referred to Saxon times [...] all of a square form”. Lysons add (ibid.) that "when we saw it in 1808, it was lying in the garden near the church." Wilson (1889) notes it as Norman and similar to the font at Crosby-on-Eden. Listed in Cox & Harvey (1907) and in Cox (1913) as a baptismal font of the Norman period. Cox (1913) adds: "The good Norm[an] font was dug up in an adjacent garden in 1848; the shaft is new." Described and illustrated in Pevsner (1967): "Font. Norman and excellent. Square, but octagonal at the bottom of the bowl. Lead-decoration, the stem beaded. Also a trellis of beaded strips." The entry for this church in Historic England [Listing NGR: NY2237662646] notes: "Church. C12 with C18 restoration and 1891 extensions. [...] Norman font on 1848 shaft is octagonal at base of bowl and square at top: leaf decoration with beaded strips and stems." The entry for this church in the CRSBI (2019) notes: "Romanesque baptismal font with carved decoration. [...] Only the bowl of the baptismal font is original. It is carved square at the top and the inner space, which is lead lined, is also cut square. The chamfered and rounded edges on the exterior of the bowl cause it to become octagonal at the bottom. In the 19thc it was set onto a modern, octagonal pillar. Each exterior face of the bowl is carved with a different design. [...] Wilson [cf. supra] stated that the church and baptismal font are Norman; he also said that it should be compared with the font at Crosby-on-Eden. But, except for the general shape with angled corners, there is nothing else to connect the two. The carving at Crosby has no carved decorations. Tradition states that the bowl of the font at Bowness was dug up at the beginning of the 19thc. In 1808, it was to be found in a garden near the church and subsequently moved to yet another garden, where it was used as a flower pot. From there, in 1848, it was moved into the church and set up on a new support and base. The basketwork carved on the bowl can be compared with that on a loose capital found on the site of Carlisle Priory, with beaded strands but without interspaced decoration. The interspaced motifs found on the font at Bowness - of two forms: nailhead and round nob - are not dissimilar to those found on the side edges of the font at Kirkbride, which is about 3.5 miles S of Bowness. Similarities between the font and other carved work in the church include the use of nailhead. The long stems with concave leaves find parallels with the N doorway capitals, despite the fact that the foliate forms are not identical. A late-12thc date for both the church and the baptismal font seems likely."