Edington nr. Westbury No. 1 / Edingdon

An article by the Rev. Canon J. E. Jackson on the 'Edingdon Monastery' in The Wiltshire Archaeological and Natural History Magazine (vol. XX (1882): 303) describes the south aisle of the church: "In the northwest corner is the font, octagonal, the basin of Purbeck marble, the base of free-stone." The Victoria County History (Wiltshire, vol. 8, 1965) notes: "The church of St. Mary the Virgin, St. Katharine and All Saints [...] replaced a church of which remains, of late Norman, character, of part of the south arcade, were found during the 19th-century restoration." The VCH (ibid.) further notes that the main font is a composite one: "The bowl of the black marble font dating from c. 1890 rests on a medieval stem. The wooden cover is dated 1626". Noted in Pevsner & Cherry (1975): "Font. The base is Perp[endicular], panelled, the cover Jacobean, dated 1626." Illustrated in Jenkins (1999): the basin is octagonal, made of dark veined marble and shaped like an inverted truncated pyramid; each side is ornamented with two trefoil arches; the stem of the base is an octagonal pedestal of a lighter coloured porous stone, each side ornamented with a trefoil window; the lower is also octagonal; the plinth is round and very wide, and apparently made of the same marble as the basin. Though not dated in the source, it appears to be late Gothic or, at least, in that style. There is a tallish (about the height of the font itself) wooden Jacobean lid of two volumes: the lower is octagonal with straight vertical panel sides; the upper part is taller and pyramidal, also octagonal, with low-relief foliage motif on the panels; there is a ball finial to which is hooked the lifting pulley. [cf. Index entry for Edington No. 2 for a second font in this church]