Walesby nr. Market Rasen No. 3

Noted in Pevsner, Harris and Antram (1989): a "part of a Roman lead tank bearing a chi-rho symbol and a scene of what is almost certainly a baptism, suggesting that the villa was in the C4 a centre of early Christianity" [NB: the 'villa' is about 800 m. east of Walesby and was excavated in 1961]. Described in Frend (2003) as the surviving fragment of a Roman-period baptism lead tank, one of a number of large vessels of lead of about 40 gallons' capacity [NB: note that Petts (2003) gives measurements between 97 cm and 46 cm of diameter] used for baptism in Roman Britain: "the frieze on one surviving side [...] shows below a chi-rho three panels divided by pillar standing figures; the outer two each show three men dressed in tunics and cloaks. The centre panel, though damaged by a gash caused by a plough, shows a naked woman standing, a robe slipping from her right shoulder, flanked by two matrona-like figures 'thickly veiled and draped'. These were perhaps sponsors of the neophyte about to be baptised, with the male figures representing the congregation. Their clothes were those of ordinary provincials." Frend cites Charles Thomas' Christianity in Roman Britain to A.D. 500 (London: Batsford, 1981): 221-225 and ill. 222, and D.F. Petch's "A Roman lead tank, Walesby", in Lincolnshire Archit. Archaeol. Soc. Rep. 9 (1961): 13-15, as sources. The online catalogue "The Gods and Goddesses of Roman Britain" [www.bedoyere.freeserve.co.uk/Rbgods.htm] has this font with a reference to RIB2416,14 [i.e. Collingwood and Wright, The Roman Inscriptions of Britain, 1995 c1956, v.1], as bearing the leters XP [chi rho], the emblem of Christ. Listed in Taylor ([2006?]) in a group of Roman decorated tanks discovered in the East Midlands (Walesby, Bishop Norton, Caistor, Brough, Thorpe by Newark and Rushton).