Arlington / Erlington

Noted in Cox & Harvey (1907) and in Harrison (1920) as a baptismal font of the Perpendicular period. In Whiteman (1998): "The square font dates from the Perpendicular period". Hutton (1957), however, states that the baptismal font, like most of the church itself dates to the Early English and Decorated periods, roughly 1250 to 1350, although there are a few Saxon and Norman architectural traces and some traces of a 157h-century mural. Illustrated in the Roughwood British Churches Album [http://www.roughwood.net/ChurchAlbum/EastSussex/Arlington/Arlington-St-Pancras.htm] [accessed 20 February 2010]. The font, which appears monolithic, consists of a plain square basin on a broad square base on which angle colonnettes have been carved with capitals and bases; on the sides of the base, pairs of foiled arches or windows; on a modern rectangular plinth. The wooden cover is aquare and flat, with metal decoration and handle; Victorian? This same source notes a holy-water stoup in the porch [NB: the fabric of the church has Anglo-Saxon details and it is believed a wooden church burned down here before that, but we have no information on the earlier font]