Edlingham

Wilson (1870) notes and illustrates a font "of Early English workmanship", located at the west end of the nave of this church. The drawing shows an octagonal font raised on a two-step plinth. Wilson (ibid.) further notes: "a Saxon church is said to have been consecrated here by Bishop Ecfrid. No remains of it are to be detected above ground, unless the archway from the church into the tower be Saxon […] the foundations of the whole may still be in situ." Listed in Cox & Harvey (1907). Described in Pevsner (1957): Font. Dated 1701, completely plain, octagonal." Listed in Stocker (1997) as one of a group of "early font bowls set within bases of successors". The font consists of an octagonal basin with verttical sides and a tall chamfered underbowl, raised on a short stem and a splaying lower base, also octagonal, and said to be a modern [Victorian?] addition; the two-step plinth is round. The wooden cover is of Jacobean design, with vertical scroll ribs and a cross finial, but is probably 19th-century as well. [NB: the original church is probably 11th- or 12th-century, but we have no information on the original font]