Pinhoe

Among the many complaints Oliver (1840-1842) had about the vandalism exercised on the church interior and furnishings, there was one about the font: "The circular font, of very remote antiquity, is still imbedded in that everlasting whitewash." Listed in Bond (1908) simply as a baptismal font with a bowl-shaped basin. Stabb (1908) writes: "The font [...] is of the style which prevailed in the reign of Edward the Confessor (1042-1066), and is certainly much older than the church; it is a misshapen block of stone scooped out, its only ornament being a rudely carved cable twisted around it, and what seems like ferns, flags or bulrushes." Clarke (1913) describes this font as interesting but "not easy to classify [...] As far as I know, there is no other font in Devon constructed in this way. Round the rim of the bowl is a squared moulding partly covered by the lead lining; immediately below this is a bold cable twist. The rest of the bowl has hatched-work all over it; short lines of alternatively diagonal arranged in vertical rows, producing a herring-bone effect. The bowl is cemented to a barrel-shaped block; this block has a single row of scallop ornament just below the juntion with the bowl, taking the place of the usual cable [...] The rest of the block is covered with incised herring-bone similar to that on the bowl, but rather more regular, and with the vertical columns more accentuated." Clarke (ibid.) argues that there is Saxon work as well as Norman on this font. Noted in Pevsner (1952): "Plain Norman with just two bands of elementary decoration."