Wickham Market

Noted in Parker (1855) as a fine octagonal font of the Decorated period "with trefoil panels and crocketed canopies […] very excellent". The 9 July 1872 Oxford Meeting of the Suffolk Institute of Archaeology [http://books.google.ca/books] [accessed 17 March 2009] reports on a visit to this church: "The gem of the church is the font, a most beautiful specimen of late Decorated work, octagonal, with trefoil panels and corcketed canopies. It has been carefully cleaned, and is quite unmutilated, while sufficient of its original painting remains to convey a clear idea of how the colouring is arranged. We trust that no restoration of the colouring may be attempted." Described and illustrated in Bond (1908) as a 14th-century octagonal mounted baptismal font; each side of the basin is ornamented with an straight arch containing a pentafoil window; the arch or niche, as Bond (ibid.) describes it, "was a straight-sided pediment, richly crocketed and cusped, and crowned with a foliated finial"; the angles of the chamfer are ornamented with animal heads. The pedestal base is also octagonal and ornamented with a double (top and bottom) blind arcade of pairs of trefoil arches, making thus a total of thirty-two; the lower base is octagonal and splayed. It had traces of painting that were later removed. Noted in Cautley (1982) as a font of the 14th century. On-site notes: the basin well is lead-lined and has a central drainage hole.