Charlton Kings

Listed in Cox & Harvey (1907) as a baptismal font of the Decorated period. Noted in Verey & Brooks (1999-2002): "Font. Tub-shaped, perhaps Norman, the lower part circular; the bowl was apparently cut into an octagon with panels of reticulated tracery in the C14." The parish web site [www.stmarysck.uk/hitory.html] [accessed 19 February 2007], based on 'A history of Charlton Knigs' by Mary Paget, notes: "original tub-shaped font, possibly 12th century [...] recut in the 14th century". There are a number of 14th-century fonts of this type: all in one piece, like some of the tub-shaped Norman fonts [e.g.: Canterbury St. Martin's], at Bloxham, Burford, Hitchin, Poynings and Tysoe, for instance, but none as awkwardly finished as this one, and it is quite possible, therefore, that a skilled mason of the 14th-century gave a new look to an older font. By the same reasoning, this may have been the way in which the 14th-century font was conceived. Verey & Brooks (ibid.) note that the 19th-century church of the Holy Apostles has a "tall oak font cover (now in the S[outh] chapel) 1884 by John C. P. Higgs".