Llanilar

The entry for Llanilar in Meyrick (1808) mentions "an ancient stone for holding holy water" on the porch, but no font. Listed in Tyrrell-Green (1928) as one of a few examples of heptagonal baptismal font: "There is a drawback attaching to a figure with an uneven number of sides, in that the whole turns to appear off the centre when seen from certain points of view, and this blemish no doubt accounts for the fact that a heptagonal form was seldom adopted for the form". Tyrrell-Green (ibid.) lists the fonts at Llanilar, in the same county, and Pendine in Carmarthenshire, as heptagonal as well. Described and illustrated in Gray (2012) as one of three heptagonal fonts in Wales [BSI lists three other in England and one in Scotland]: "The carving of the bowl is sharp and geometrically accurate but the upper part of the bowl is misaligned on the base. The stone is a sedimentary conglomerate with shaly flakes of Cilgerran slate embedded. Tim [Palmer] noted that a similar stone was used at St Dogmael’s Abbey. It is a very coarse and rough stone, not an easy material for decorative carving but good for geometric shapes. [...] the design of plain incised panels is unusual and could have been intended to hold decorative panels of wood or some other medium.The base of the font is now stored separately, in the porch [...] it is Dundry stone [...] Why a base in Dundry and a shaft and bowl in the sedimentary conglomerate?" The heptagonal basin has a long chamfer with a moulding at its end; the present base is a modern plain pedestal with a moulded lower base. There is no evidence of cover hardware on the upper rim of the basin. The base that Gray reports in the porch [cf. supra] appears to be hexagonal and ill-suited to accommodate the heptagonal basin; it has a drain hole going down its centre. [NB: the old base in the porch does not seem to match the basin isnide in any way; was it the base of a different font?]