Woolpit

No font mentioned in Parker (1855), who informs that the spire was struck by lightning on 15 July 1852 "and completely destroyed, carrying with it in its fall two-thirds of the tower". Parker (ibid.) further reports that the re-building started immediately and "it is now (December, 1854.) on the verge of completion." Listed in Tyrrell-Green (1928) as one in a very large group of baptismal fonts that are plain octagonal with straightsided basins; this one is "a smaller and graceful plain octagon font [that] has a well-moulded base with concave sides. A similar one, although larger in size, is found in Swineshead (Lincolnshire). Knott (2008) writes: "Your first sight of St Mary will be Phipson's crazy spire, visible from miles away, and quite unlike anything else in East Anglia. Suffolk is a county where spires are rare enough, anyway. From the far side of the Gipping valley you can see this one and two others, piercing the soft harvest mist in autumn. They are Phipson's equally absurd Great Finborough, and the 1990s blade of St Peter and St Mary, Stowmarket. There are only about a dozen more in the whole of the county. The excuse for this one was that the tower was struck by lightning in 1852, bringing down the previous lead and timber affair (presumably like the one at Hadleigh). The font is contemporary with the tower, suggesting that the old one was destroyed by the fall." [NB: the basin of the font looks battered and, if it is the old one, perhaps, restored; the moulded pedestal base is probably 19th-century]