Barnard Castle

Noted in Gough (1792): "The font at Barnard Castle has in the upper part merchants' marks and these initials, A.E.M.T." Gough's footnote: "Hutchinson's Excursion to the Lakes, 366, 367. Camden's Brit. III, iii." Illustrated in The Gentleman's Magazine (issue of July 1804: pl. II, fig. 4, p. 621). Hutchinson (1823) found the detached tower "becoming ruinous"; the interior of the church "wretchedly stalled, the pavement broken and uneven, and the whole appearance slovenly and offensive"; Hutchinson (ibid) writes of the font: "There is a remarkable bason, of large dimensions for a font, in this church, of an octagonal figure, cut in black marble, or porphyry, which is found in the bed of the river Tees, near this place: four of the faces have each a shield raised thereon, bearing Saxon characters the intermediate facings are inscribed with a figure, much like some of the tradesmen's marks or devices, but doubtless, here of religious implication, and perhaps symbolical of the Trinity: the characters are cyphers, to express the usual sentence which we see inscribed in old fonts in various modes, viz. 'Pater filius et spiritus Sanctus'." Mackenzie & Ross (1834) quote Hutchinson verbatim. Murray (1873) notes "an octagonal font of Tees marble" in this church. Listed in Cox & Harvey (1907) as a baptismal font of the Perpendicular period.