Broxbourne / Brochesborne / Brokesburn / Broxborne
Image copyright © John Salmon, 2007
CC-BY-SA-2.0
Results: 6 records
view of font and cover
Copyright Statement: Image copyright © John Salmon, 2007
Image Source: digital photograph taken 23 May 2007 by John Salmon [www.geograph.org.uk/photo/472869] [accessed 2 November 2016]
Copyright Instructions: CC-BY-SA-2.0
view of font
Copyright Statement: Image copyright © [in the public domain]
Image Source: digital image of an 1816 engraving by I. Greig from a drawing by G. Sheppard for the 'Antiquarian Itinerary' (1815-1818)
Copyright Instructions: PD
design element - architectural - arcade - blind - round arches - 16
Scene Description: very shallow carving; the arcade has no defined columns, capitals or bases
Copyright Statement: Image copyright © John Salmon, 2007
Image Source: digital photograph taken 23 May 2007 by John Salmon [www.geograph.org.uk/photo/472869] [accessed 2 November 2016]
Copyright Instructions: CC-BY-SA-2.0
view of church exterior - northeast view
Copyright Statement: Image copyright © John Salmon, 2007
Image Source: digital photograph taken 23 May 2007 by John Salmon [www.geograph.org.uk/photo/472842] [accessed 2 November 2016]
Copyright Instructions: CC-BY-SA-2.0
view of church exterior in context - west view
Copyright Statement: Image copyright © John Salmon, 2007
Image Source: digital photograph taken 23 May 2007 by John Salmon [www.geograph.org.uk/photo/472882] [accessed 2 November 2016]
Copyright Instructions: CC-BY-SA-2.0
view of church interior - nave - looking east
Copyright Statement: Image copyright © Christine Matthews, 2011
Image Source: digital photograph taken 14 May 2011 by Christine Matthews [www.geograph.org.uk/photo/2411767] [accessed 2 November 2016]
Copyright Instructions: CC-BY-SA-2.0
INFORMATION
Font ID: 05936BRO
Object Type: Baptismal Font1
Font Century and Period/Style: 12th - 13th century, Late Norman / Transitional?
Cognate Fonts: Sutton, Beccles, Denham and many others all over England
Church / Chapel Name: Parish Church of St. Augustine
Font Location in Church: Inside the church, in the W end of the nave
Church Patron Saint(s): St. Augustine of Hippo
Church Address: Somerby Close, Broxbourne, Hertfordshire EN10 7JU
Site Location: Hertfordshire, East, England, United Kingdom
Directions to Site: Located off the A170, 4-5 km SSW of Hoddesdon, N of London
Ecclesiastic Region: Diocese of St. Albans
Historical Region: Hundred of Hertford
Font Notes:
Click to view
There is an entry for Broxbourne [variant spelling] in the Domesday survey [http://opendomesday.org/place/TL3607/broxbourne/] [accessed 2 November 2016], but it mentions neither cleric nor church in it. Gough (1792) reports a square [?] font here, mounted on four pillars. Engraved by I. Greig from a drawing by G. Sheppard for the 'Antiquarian Itinerary' (1815-1818). Reported in Lewis' Dictionary of 1848. Knight (1867) reports "a curious font" in this church. Noted in the Royal Commission on Historical Monuments, Hertforshire (1911): "Font: octagonal bowl on circular shafts, bowl ornamented with round-headed panels, Purbeck marble, late 12th-century." The Victoria County History (Hertford, vol. 3, 1912) notes: "The advowson of the church of St. Augustine originally belonged to the lords of the manor of Broxbourne and was granted together with that manor to the Knights Hospitallers by Robert Earl of Leicester. [...] In 1190, however, Garner of Naples, Prior of the Hospitallers, granted the church of Broxbourne to the Bishop of London for a yearly payment of 4 marks. [...] The church was entirely rebuilt and enlarged in the 15th century, and no detail now remains of the former nave and chancel, which appear to have been added to from time to time. [...] The font has an octagonal bowl of Purbeck marble, on each face of which are two plain sunk panels with round heads; the bowl rests ory a circular shaft with eight smaller ones under the angles of the octagon; the shafts have moulded bases and stand on a plain octagonal plinth; it is of late 12th-century date". Noted in Leach (1975) as a font made of Purbeck marble, Polygonal I Type (Hexagonal): "bowl with two round headed panels on each face; eight subsidiary shafts"
[source given: Dr. G. Dru Drury] [NB: all other sources describe the font as octagonal].
Noted as a Norman font "on eight pillars [...] probably early Norman" in Tompkins (1922). Tyrrell-Green (1928) writes: "The octagonal form persisted in fonts of the same class in the thirteenth century, with the change that in the Early English style pointed arches take the place of rounded ones in the shallow incised arcading". This font is one of them. Noted in Dru Drury (1949) as a baptismal font with an octagonal basin made of Purbeck marble, decorated "with shallow panels of round-headed double arcading." Noted in Pevsner & Cherry (1977) :"Font. Octagonal, on columns, Norman, with shallow blank arcading, two arches per panel." The 'Short Guide to Broxbourne Church, England', by Busky Hartman [source: wwwwisecomp.com/cd/BroxbourneChurch.htm] notes: "The font must originally have belonged to an earlier church, somewhere else, before Robert Ecton came as priest to the newly completed St. Augustine's in 1460." [NB: the RCHM (1911) reports also two holy-water stoups in this church: "in S. porch, of rough workmanship; in S. aisle, E. of S. door, recess for stoup" -- no separate entry in this Index]
[source given: Dr. G. Dru Drury] [NB: all other sources describe the font as octagonal].
Noted as a Norman font "on eight pillars [...] probably early Norman" in Tompkins (1922). Tyrrell-Green (1928) writes: "The octagonal form persisted in fonts of the same class in the thirteenth century, with the change that in the Early English style pointed arches take the place of rounded ones in the shallow incised arcading". This font is one of them. Noted in Dru Drury (1949) as a baptismal font with an octagonal basin made of Purbeck marble, decorated "with shallow panels of round-headed double arcading." Noted in Pevsner & Cherry (1977) :"Font. Octagonal, on columns, Norman, with shallow blank arcading, two arches per panel." The 'Short Guide to Broxbourne Church, England', by Busky Hartman [source: wwwwisecomp.com/cd/BroxbourneChurch.htm] notes: "The font must originally have belonged to an earlier church, somewhere else, before Robert Ecton came as priest to the newly completed St. Augustine's in 1460." [NB: the RCHM (1911) reports also two holy-water stoups in this church: "in S. porch, of rough workmanship; in S. aisle, E. of S. door, recess for stoup" -- no separate entry in this Index]
COORDINATES
UTM: 30U 706074 5736865
Latitude & Longitude (Decimal): 51.74474, -0.01485
Latitude & Longitude (DMS): 51° 44′ 41.06″ N, 0° 0′ 53.46″ W
MEDIUM AND MEASUREMENTS
Material: stone, limestone (Purbeck marble)
Font Shape: octagonal, mounted
Basin Interior Shape: round
Basin Exterior Shape: octagonal
LID INFORMATION
Date: modern?
Material: wood, oak?
Apparatus: no
Notes: octagonal and flat, with metal decoration and ring handle
REFERENCES
- Antiquarian itinerary, comprising specimens of archictecture, monastic, castellated, and domestic, with other vestiges of antiquity in Great Britain, London: Published for the proprietors by W. Clarke [...], 1815-1818, plate
- Victoria County History [online], University of London, 1993-. URL: https://www.british-history.ac.uk.
- Dru Drury, G., "The use of Purbeck in mediaeval times", 70, Proceedings of the Dorset Natural History and Archaeological Society, 1949, pp. 74-98; p. 77
- Gough, Richard, "Description of the old font in the Church of East Meon, Hampshire, 1789: with some observations on fonts", X, Archaeologia, 1792, pp. 183-209; p. 190
- Great Britain. Royal Commission on Historical Monuments (England), An Inventory of the Historical Monuments in Hertfordshire, London: Printed for His Majesty's Stationary Office by J. Truscott, 1911, p. 72
- Knight, Charles, The English Cyclopaedia, London: Bradbury, Evans & Co., 1867, vol. 3: 169
- Leach, Rosemary, A Investigation into the use of Purbeck Marble in Medieval England, Hartlepool: E.W. Harrisons & Sons, 1975, p. 74
- Lewis, Samuel, A Topographical Dictionary of England, Comprising the Several Counties, Cities, Boroughs, Corporate and Market Towns, Parishes, Chapelries, and Townships, and the Islands of Guernsy, Jersey, and Man, with Historical and Statistical Descriptions [...], London: S. Lewis, 1831, [www.british-history.ac.uk/report.asp?compid=50838] [accessed 22 January 2007]
- Pevsner, Nikolaus, Hertfordshire, Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1977, p. 114
- Tompkins, Herbert Winckworth, Hertfordshire, London: Methuen & Co., 1922, [www.guttenberg.org/files/18252/18252-8.txt]
- Tyrrell-Green, E., Baptismal Fonts Classified and Illustrated, London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge: The Macmillan Co., 1928, p. 29, 88