Sedlescombe / Salescome / Sedlescomb

There is a 1773 watercolour drawing of this font and cover by Samuel Hieronymus Grimm (1733-1794) in the British Library collections [Shelfmark: Additional MS 5670 - Item number: f. 53 (no. 95). Bond (1908) describes and illustrates the Jacobean font cover without a reference to the baptismal font itself, the rim of which can be just peeked at in his illustration. Harrison (1920), too, describes the cover but not the font itself: "curious canopy of font (Perp[endicular]) of remarkable form, with a door to reach into the font". The wooden cover is noted and illustrated in Needham (1944). The cover is of the "Rim Buffet" type, with plain tall vertical sides; it is polygonal and ugly, with ornamentation only on the upper part of the certical sides and on the short pyramid below the finial. Font and cover are dated in Whiteman (1994), who illustrates the cover but not the font: "Of early 16th-century date are the font and its cover with linenfold panelling and folding doors". Noted in the GBNF web site [http://www.gbnf.com] [accessed 18 November 2007] [original source of the information not given]: "The iron-braced octagonal font has an oak linenfold cover, raised by a massive pulley, which dates from Tudor times." The font-cover is noted in Howard & Crossley (1919) as being of early-16th century design. The cover is noted and illustrated in Needham (1944). The font itself consists of an octagonal basin -now girded with a metal reinforment brace- with a tall plain chamfered octagonal-to-round underbowl decorated with a round moulding at the bottom, on a plain cylindrical stem and an octagonal splaying lower base; raised on a round plinth with kneeling stone.