Harpenden

No entry found for Harpenden in the Domesday survey. The 'Building news and architectural review' (vol. 9, issue of 21 November 1862: 402) reports the recent re-consecration of the Church of St. Nicholas, "having been entirely re-built, with the exception of the tower [...] The dilapidated font, of Purbeck marble, has been restored to its original design." Listed in Cox & Harvey (1907) and in Tompkins (1922) as a baptismal font of the Norman period 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, according to T-G, one of them. The Victoria County History (Hertfordshire, vol. 2, 1908) reports that a chapel dedicated to St. Nicholas in Harpenden was involved in a dispute involving also the church at Wheathampstead [cf. Index entry for the latter]; "By a deed dated 22 December, 1319, Pope John XXII granted to the inhabitants of Harpenden licence to receive sacraments and sacramentals", which would suggest the dispensation of baptism would be included; in this respect the VCH (ibid) adds in a footnote: " If the font now in the church belonged originally to Harpenden chapel, the sacrament of baptism must have been administered here some hundred and twenty years before the date of this licence. It would seem possible that this font may have come from the mother church of Wheathampstead at the time that Harpenden chapel was licensed for sacraments in 1319, as it is evident that Wheathampstead had a new font then or a little later." Noted in the Royal Commission on Historical Monuments, Hertforshire (1911): "Font: Purbeck marble, panelled bowl of c. 1200, on modern shafts." Listed in Leach (1975) as a font made of Purbeck marble; "subsidiary shafts are modern". In Pevsner & Cherry (1977): "Font. Of c.1200, an octagonal bowl of Purbeck marble with two blank pointed arches on each panel."