Charlcombe
Image copyright © British Library Board, 2011
PERMISSION NOT AVAILABLE -- IMAGE NOT FOR PUBLIC USE
Results: 5 records
BU01:
design element - motifs - varied
Scene Description: [cf. Font notes]
Copyright Statement: Image copyright © John Wilkes, 2008
Image Source: digital photograph by John Wilkes [www.allthecotswolds.com
Copyright Instructions: Standing permission
LB01:
design element - motifs - moulding
Copyright Statement: Image copyright © John Wilkes, 2008
Image Source: digital photograph by John Wilkes [www.allthecotswolds.com
Copyright Instructions: Standing permission
view of church exterior
Copyright Statement: Image copyright © John Wilkes, 2008
Image Source: digital photograph by John Wilkes [www.allthecotswolds.com
Copyright Instructions: Standing permission
view of font and cover
Scene Description: the cover depicted here, of 17th-century design, is now unaccounted for and replaced by a later one [cf. FontNotes]
Copyright Statement: Image copyright © British Library Board, 2011
Image Source: 1790 ink-wash-on-paper drawing by Samuel Hieronymus Grimm (1733-1794) in the British Library Online Galley [www.bl.uk/onlinegallery/onlineex/topdrawings/c/005add000015546u00198000.html] [accessed 29 October 2011]
Copyright Instructions: PERMISSION NOT AVAILABLE -- IMAGE NOT FOR PUBLIC USE
view of font and cover in context
Scene Description: notice the old cover and the lifting chains
Copyright Statement: Image copyright © Somerset Record Service, Somerset County Council, 2008
Image Source: B&W postcard, date unknown, reproduced in Somerset Record Service, Somerset County Council [http://www.somerset.gov.uk/archives/ASP/PostcardShow.asp?Image=../Images/Postcard2/A3013/A3013152.jpg&Title=Charlcombe+Church%2C+interior] [accessed 9 March 2008]
Copyright Instructions: PERMISSION NOT AVAILABLE -- IMAGE NOT FOR PUBLIC USE
INFORMATION
FontID: 05446CHA
Church/Chapel: Parish Church of the Blessed Virgin Mary
Church Patron Saints: St. Mary the Virgin
Church Location: Charlcombe Lane, Charlcombe, Avon, BA1 8DR
Country Name: England
Location: Somerset, South West
Directions to Site: Located just outside Bath, on the N side
Ecclesiastic Region: Diocese of Bath & Wells
Font Location in Church: Inside the church, in the W end of the nave
Century and Period: 11th - 12th century, Norman
Credit and Acknowledgements: We are grateful to John Wilkkes, of www.allthecotswalds.com, for the photographs of church and font
There is an entry for a "Drawing, in Indian ink, of the circular stone font in Charlcombe Church; by Samuel Hieronymus Grimm: 10 1.2 in. x 7 1/2 in. (P. R. Kaye, IV, 312)" in the Brtish Museum Catalogue of Manuscripts... (1844- ); it is actually an ink-wash-on-paper drawing done by the Swiss artist in 1790 [Shelfmark: Additional MS 15546 - Item number: f. 198]. The font is noted in Tunstall (1847) with an exagerated early date and an inaccurate description: "The font, which is bowl-shaped, is undoubtedly Saxon; it has carved moulding, nearly obliterated with yellow wash, and stands near the west window." The Handbook for travellers… (1869) reports the font as Norman. Noted in Kelly's Directory of 1883. Noted in Wade & Wade (1929): "font (probably Norm[an])." Described in the Bath WEB site [http://people.bath.ac.uk/liskmj/living-spring/sourcearchive/fs2/fs2jh1.htm] [accessed 9 March 2008] as a font in the old Norman church dedicated to St. Mary the Virgin. This same source cites Jeremy Harte's The Holy Wells of Somerset on the old custom of filling this baptismal font with water from the nearby St Mary's Well, water which was "reputed to be good for the eyes" [cf. Index entry for the font at Wellow for a similar practice]. The font consists of a hemispherical basin, a cylindrical stem and a moulded lower base, raised on a small quadrangular plinth; besides the thick roll moulding around the lower base the ornamentation is a series of oddly-shaped crude motifs incised around the underbowl (round arches, circles, etc., with a few crude chevrons above them. There is evidence of several repairs to the upper rim area, with replacement stone apparent. The present font cover is round and flat, with metal reinforcements, and appears old. It is not certain whether or not it is the same cover shown in an old photograph; in it the cover is raised by means of chains, but the chains are gone in the present cover. An earlier cover is the one illustrated by Grimm in 1790, a round platform with the usual Jacobean raised scroll ribs around a centre pivot; that cover may have dated from the 17th century. The font is located besides one of pillars at the west end of the nave.
COORDINATES
MEDIUM AND MEASUREMENTS
Material:
stone
Font Shape: hemispheric (mounted)
Basin Interior Shape: round
Basin Exterior Shape: round
LID INFORMATION
Date: 17th-century?
Material:
wood,
Apparatus: disappeared? [cf. FontNotes]
Notes: [cf. FontNotes]
REFERENCES
British Museum, Catalogue of the manuscript maps, charts, and plans, and of the topographical drawings in the British Museum, London: Printed by order of the Trustees, 1844-
Kelly, Eric Robert, Kelly's Directory of Somersetshire with the city of Bristol, London: Kelly & Co., 1883
Murray, John, A handbook for travellers in Wiltshire, Dorsetshire, and Somersetshire, London: John Murray, 1869
Tunstall, James, Rambles about Bath, and its neighbourhood, London; Bath: Simpkin, Marsahll and Co.; William Pocock, 1847
Wade, G.H., Somerset, London: Methurn & Co., 1929