Lydiard Millicent / Liddiard Milicent / Liddiard Millicent / Liddiard Milisant

Described by Paley (1844) as a late 12th century Norman font; the "workmanship is rude and shallow, and now a good deal choked up with whitewash". The basin is cylindrical with slightly tapering sides, and has a blind arcade of intersecting round arches of "beaded-tape" motif, though now the pattern is practically invisible. The stem of the base is a plain cylindrical column and it rests on two polygonal (octagonal?) plinths. Described in Cox & Harvey (1907) as a "handsome circular Norman font [...] surrounded with interlaced arcading, the arches of which are ornamented with the fillet moulding; it is late in the style." Described in Buck (1950), who comments on Paley's remarks on the whitewashing of the font [cf. supra]: "this has obviously cleaned off, and the carving now looks as if it had been touched up"; Buck groups it with other Wiltshire late-Norman fonts of ca. 1150-1200. Noted in Pevsner & Cherry (1975): "Font. Circular, Norman, with interlaced arches." The entry for this church in the CRSBI [https://www.crsbi.ac.uk/view-item?i=2946] [accessed 2 April 2025] notes: "This church houses a font with a circular bowl decorated with a blind intersecting arcade on a plain cylindrical shaft. The arches have shafts that are semicircular in plan and have small scallop capitals and bases".