Ormskirk No 3 / Ormeskierk / Ormeskirk / Ormiskirk

No individual entry found for Ormskirk in the Domesday survey. Draper (1864) writes: "an old stone font, supposed by some to have been presented to the Church by the Countess of Derby in 1661, a presumption quite plausible and acceptable, as one side of the font bears the crest of the Stanley family, and the stone appears to have been hewn from the Round O Quarry, in Lathom. This font was first used by the Rev. Nathaniel Heywood, as the following entry in the baptismal register records: '2 January 1661. Elizabeth Gnise dl: William of Ormak : Bapt. Being ye First in ye new Font p~. Nath, Heywood'. For a great number of years the font occupied various positions in and about the church, at one time being placed under a spout to receive the downfall and at another being the companion of rubbish, having been removed from the baptistery about 90 years ago, and supplanted by a marble basin, the gift of the Rev. William Knowles, M.A., vicar of the parish. Last year the old font underwent a complete and careful renovation, at the expense of William Weisby, Esq., [...] The font, which was last year (1863) restored to its proper place in the baptistery, is sexagonal, having on one side the date of its original erection, '1661', on another a Latin cross, on a calvary of three steps; then a St. Andrew's cross; next a Royal Crown with the initials 'C. B.', being those of Charles II; then the Stanley crest -- the Eagle and the Child; and on the sixth side the representation of an hour glass" [source: www.isle-of-man.com/manxnotebook/fulltext/hs1864/index.htm]. Dixon (1878) reports finding the base of a font buried in the church: "On the north side of the main pier of the spire, below the recent floor, was found a square base with a quatrefoil moulding on its surface, which seems beyond a doubt to have been the base of a now lost font, belonging to the Early English enlargement of the building." Dixon (ibid.) further reports: "The base just named stands within the westernmost bay of the nave, on the south side of the church, and to the right hand within the entrance through the spire, the arch of which has been cut away to make a stair approach to the organ loft and south gallery." Additionally, Dixon (ibid.) informs of a fragment of an even earlier font found here: "A portion of what may have been a Norman font, the predecessor of this, is inserted in the external wall of the eastern gable of the church." Ellis (1902) refers to a paper in an earlier issue of the Transactions of the Historic Society of Lancashire & Cheshire (1877-1878) in which "Mr. James Dixon refers to a fragment of what appears to have been a Norman font, inserted in the external wall of the eastern gable of the church. I have not been able to discover this fragment; and what the author of the same paper believes to have been the base of an E[arly] E[nglish] font, which was discovered on the north side of the main pier of the spire, appears to have been covered up or destroyed during the restoration of the church. The present font bears the date 1661." Listed in Cox & Harvey (1907) as a Restoration baptismal font dated 1661. Noted in Pevsner (1969): "Font. 1661. With the small simple motifs typical of Restoration fonts, in this case a pelican, , a cross, an hourglass, and also CR and a crown" [NB: CR and crown likely for 'Carolus Rex', i.e., Charles II]. Pollard & Pevsner (2006) note also the font cover, "a typical George Pace piece, 1973". [NB: the Victoria County History (Lancaster, vol. 3, 1907) notes: "The earliest part of the building is the north wall of the chancel; its date is about 1170", but we have no information on the baptismal font of that period, other than what is noted in Dixon [cf. supra].