Vertheuil

Listed by Enlart as an end-of-the-12th-century font with a hemispheric basin supported on colonnettes decorated with four human heads; later on in the same source he comments "celle de Vertheuil (Gironde) qui n'a que des cannelures" (!) (Enlart, 1902) [NB: RECHECK SOURCE: TWO VERTHEUILS?]. The Dictionnaire des églises... (1966- ) entry simply states that the font at the Ancienne abbatiale Saint-Pierre is from the 15th century. The listing in Palissy [ref.: PM33000852] reads: "Fonts baptismaux pédiculés [...] 15e siècle". The present font is noted and illustrated in Visites Aquitaine, where an old well-head that looks much like a font exists in the coutyard [http://visites.aquitaine.fr/fonts-baptismaux-de-l-eglise-saint-pierre] [accessed 30 December 2013]: “Dans la nef de l’église Saint-Pierre, près de la porte sud, des fonts baptismaux en pierre datent du XVe siècle. Dans la cour de l’abbaye de Vertheuil, se trouve un vieux puits cannelé du XVe siècle qui rappelle, par sa forme, ces fonts baptismaux monolithes." The font is raised on a wide circular two-step plinth. The web site of Les Amis de l'Abbaye de Vertheuil [www.amisabbayevertheuil.org] [accessed 30 December 2013] states tha the font is monolithic, carved from a ballast stone of an English ship [="Des fonts baptismaux taillés dans une unique pierre (lest d'un navire anglais)"]. [NB: we have no information on the font from the original 11th-12th century church here].