Bourton-on-the-Water No. 1 / Bortune
INFORMATION
FontID: 07639BOU
Church/Chapel: [cf. FontNotes]
Church Location: Bourton-on-the-Water, Gloucestershire, GL54 2AP, UK
Country Name: England
Location: Gloucestershire, South West
Directions to Site: Located on the A429, S of Stow-on-the-Wold
Historical Region: Hundred of Slaughter
Font Location in Church: [found inside a building]
Century and Period: 4th - 5th century, Early Christian
Font Notes: Click to view font notes
There is an entry for Bourton [-on-the-Water] [variant spelling] in the Domesday survey [http://opendomesday.org/place/SP1620/bourton-on-the-water/] [accessed 13 December 2018]; it mentions a priest and "0.5 church lands" but not the church itself, though there must have been one there. The entry for this parish in the Victoria County History (Gloucester, vol. 6, 1965) notes: "There was a priest in Bourton in 1086, [...] presumably endowed and presented by Evesham Abbey. In 1209 Bourton was one of the churches for which the abbey claimed exempt jurisdiction [...] The earliest known building was apparently late Saxon, and the nave of that period survived in part (with some later windows) until the late 18th century, with two small round-headed windows high up in the north wall. [...] The oval-shaped bowl of the 18th-century font, which was replaced during the 19th-century rebuilding and the pedestal of which was lost, [...] was reset in the 20th century in the west wall of the aisle." Petts (2003: 110) writes about a baptismal lead tank found in a bulding of the Roman period. [cf. Index entry for Bourton on the Water for two later fonts found inside the church of St. Lawrence]
COORDINATES
UTM: 30U 585410 5749087
MEDIUM AND MEASUREMENTS
Material:
metal, lead
REFERENCES
Victoria County History [online], University of London, 1993-. Accessed: 2018-12-13 00:00:00. URL: https://www.british-history.ac.uk.
Petts, David, "Votive Deposits and Christian Practice in Late Roman Britain", The Cross Goes North: Processes of Conversion in Northern Europe, AD 300-1300, York: York Medieval Press, 2003