East Dean nr. Chichester

Peat & Halstead (1912) report that the basin had been broken up and used as construction filler in the church [NB: not an uncommon way of keeping the damaged or disused as part of the sacred recint; another common practice was to bury the disused font, or, less appropriately, to retire it to the churchyard or vicarage and use it as a planter]. Harrison (1920) notes a "font with a quaint base" here. The Victoria County History (Sussex, vol. 4, 1953) notes: "The church of East Dean, with that of Singleton [...] formed part of the prebend of the collegiate church of Arundel which was given to Chichester Cathedral in 1150. [...] It seems to have been begun in the 12th century, the probable date of the tower and transepts; the most part of the nave is slightly later [...] The font is of uncertain date; an octagonal basin rests on a thick octagonal shaft with concave faces, and this on a base resembling an inverted late-12th-century capital; the cover is of the 17th or 18th century, and the font itself is possibly of 1660." Whiteman (1994) notes: "The octagonal font, thought to be c.1600, has an intriguing base which may be an inverted 12th-century capital brought from elsewhere". The Corpus of Romanesque Sculpture in Britain and Ireland [www.crsbi.ac.uk/ed/sx/edall/index.htm] [accessed 20 July 2006], reports and illustrates the 12th-century upturned capital now used as lower base of the otherwise modern octagonal font. [NB: we have no information on the mid-12th century church here].