Sennen / St. Sennen / Saint Sennen

Hals' History of Cornwall (1750) informs about an "inscription on the foot of the font-stone [...] in a barbarous strange character of letters, of which I could see but part [...] which I saw to consist of these letters. -- Anno Dom. mille. CCCC XX. or XL.; in the year of our Lord 1420 or 1440". Noted in Blight (1862): "The font has a modern appearance, but stands on an ancient base, which has an inscription in Old English letters." Blight (ibid.) also makes reference to Hals [cf. supra] and notes that "The stone has been removed to its present position since Hals saw it", dates the inscription to the 15th century and gives a transcription and translation of it. T.M.N. Owen, in a letter to 'Notes and Queries, Jan. 5, 1884, writes: "The font at St. Sennen (The Land's End) Church, Cornwall, bears a mutilated inscription, at the base or footpace, which I had no time to transcribe on the occasion of my visit. It records, however, the dedication of the church on the anniversary of the decollation of St. John the Baptist (Aug. 29), 1444 (Murray)." This baptismal font was photographed by J.C. Burrow, of Camborne, for the article written by Thurston C. Peter for The Cornish Magazine of 1899; no reference to the font is made in the text of the article. The font, round and mounted on an octagonal base and lower base of a later date, appears to be of the 15th century, but may have been re-carved at a later date. It stands on a quadrangular platform bearing an inscription. The article by Th.C. Peter refers to this platform as an inscribed stone that is now [i.e., 1899] "restored to the place in which the historian Hals found it in 1700, when it served to support the font. The legend is :--Eccla i decole (the l, i and l are, in each case, crossed by a ~) (on the north side) s. i. b. dedica fvit (on the east side) Anno dñi millo (on the south side) CCCCXLI...(broken) (on west side); the is, the church was dedicated to the Decollation of St. John the Baptist [...]" and gives the years 1441, 1442, 1443, 1444 or 1449 as possible years that would match the broken dateline. Although the article by Th.C. Peter assumes that the "Sennen" is indeed Senan, the Irish abbot born in Kilrush, Co. Clare, Ireland, Farmer's Oxford Dictionary of Saints (1987: 381-382) suggests that the patron of Sennen "seems instead to have been an unknown Cornish woman saint, called Sanctae Sennanae in the Poll-tax rolls of 1377". Cox (1912) notes the inscription on the font as 1441. Pevsner (1970) notes: "Font. With inscription 1441 on the pedestal." Brian Simpson, in 'Parish Church of Saint Sennen' [www.sennen-cove/churchint.htm] informs tha the new font cover was "carved by a local farmer, Mr. Saundry, out of wood from the wreck of the Khyber lost on March 15th 1905 near St. Levan."