Dodford

Paley (1844) quotes the reverend W. Thornton, then [ca. 1844] vicar of Dodford: "a description of this richly ornamented Norman Font [...] of Northamptonshire oolite." The said vicar had the font stripped of the paint covering it. The sculpture covering the basin sides, floral motifs in linked semicircles, was reported in good shape but the font had been cracked and damaged by the effort at removing the old staples for the cover. The same source reports "a plain pyramidal octagonal cover of oak, substituted for the flat board which was formerly used". Reported in Lewis' Dictionary of 1848 as "a circular font, of very ancient construction". Ditto in Whellan (1849). Noted in Mee (1945): "The font is Norman, richly ornamented with half-circles filled with ornament, like tiny tympana". [NB: cf. Index entry for Flore, for a font temporarily in Dodford]. Maguire (1970) includes this font in a group the decoration of which appear to be related to that on a fragment from St Andrew's Priory. 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, with lunettes upright and upside down, their outline beaded. They are linked up, and the links are beaded too. Foliage in the lunettes." 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)."