Greens Norton / Green's Norton

Simpson (1828) writes that "there is, most probably, no great difference between the date of this and the Pauler's Pury [Paulerspury] Font"; he reports it "very much choked by whitewash" and comments that the situation of the font at that time [ca. 1828] "at the east end of the south aisle against the wall", could not have been the original placement because there is a piscina close to it, "consequently before the Reformation there must have been an altar where the Font now stands." The basin shows considerable damage to its lower part on Simpson's engraving [cf. Images area]. Described in Cox-Harvey (1907) as a handsomely ornamented cylindrical bowl font of the Norman period. The sides of the quasi-cylindrical basin are ornamented with a pattern of romboid frames of beaded-tape, each filled with a large flower; the upper rim side has saw-tooth all around while the lower side has a rounded festoon also all around. The basin stood on a two-step quadrangular base. By Mee's time (1945) the cylindrical basin had been given a graded underbowl and mounted on a plain cylindrical pedestal base and a polygonal plinth. A cover of sorts, flat and round, appears on it. Maguire (1970) suggests that this font, like the ones at Mears Ashby and Harpole, could be attributed to the workshop responsible for the decoration of the west portal at Northampton St Peter's. Maguire (ibid.) further notes that "the four and eight-petalled flowers on the fonts at Green's Norton and Dodford [...] are very similar to those on a capital of S. Savino at Piacenza [...] Similar flowers feature in the decoration of the church of S. Michele at Pavia." In Pevsner & Cherry (1973): "Circular, Norman, decorated with beaded lozenges filled with flowers." The Corpus of Romanesque Sculpture in Britain and Ireland [www.crsbi.ac.uk/ed/nh/harpo/] notes this as a font "of the lively workshop from St Peter's, Northampton, active in the 1140s and '50s. Other fonts by these sculptors are found in the county at Green's Norton, Paulerspury, Dodford, Tiffield and Weedon Lois, and nearby at Maids' Moreton (Bucks)."