Bere Regis No. 2 / Bere

There are three entries for Bere [Regis] in the Domesday survey [https://opendomesday.org/place/SY8494/bere-regis/] [accessed 11 January 2023], of which the Land of Brictward the priest reports " 2 churches. 1.16 church lands" in it. Described and illustrated in Bond (1908) as an archaic baptismal, a "hopeless muddle in design" and listed among the pre-Conquest fonts in the same source. The font, as it appears in Bond's illustration, has an amorphous (dismorphous?) air about it: a quasi-cylindrical basin with four heads (animal?) protruding at mid-side level and resembling the bases of some Romanesque Scandinavian fonts; the middle volume, looking almost like a tractor tire, has ornamentation which appears to continue on the next volume down; the lower base, almost cylindrical, appears to continue the motifs of the centre part, perhaps foliage [the poor resolution of Bond's illustration makes it more difficult to figure our details]. [NB: we do not know to which of the churches in Bere Regis this font belongs -- see also the font listed in the church of St. John the Baptist [Index entry for Bere Regis No. 1]] -- [to be completed]