Wimborne Minster / Winborne / Winburne / Winbvrne

The ere two entries for Wimborne [Minster] [variant spellings] in the Domesday survey [https://opendomesday.org/place/SZ0099/wimborne-minster/] [accessed 3 June 2024] neither of which mentions priest or church in it. During his visit to this church in October 1825, Glynne (1923) noted: "The font stands in the nave near the west end; it is elevated upon three steps, is octagonal, and of black marble and ornamented with trefoil arches." Noted in Long (1923) as a good example of "a considerable number of Early English fonts in this county [...] mostly of Purbeck marble, a fact which leads one to suppose that the majority were constructed in or near the Isle of Purbeck, and exported in considerable quantities to other parts of Dorset, and even much further afield. The type consists of an octagonal bowl, with shallow pointed arcading on the sides. The bowl is usually mounted on a thick central, and four or eight smaller detached angle shafts, standing on a low plain base." In Dru Drury (1949) as a 13th-century baptismal font made of Purbeck marble, the basin of which "has trefoil heads to the double arcading on its panels, has eight slender supporting shafts in addition to a spirally carved central stem." In Newman & Pevsner (1972): "Font. Black Purbeck marble, octagonal, with two blank pointed-trefoiled arches each side." Listed in Leach (1975) as a font made of Purbeck marble; "bowl with two trefoil headed panels on each face; the central stem is of barley sugar twist type; subsidiary shafts are modern". Described in the Wimborne Minster site as "a Norman font of Purbeck Marble" [www.bath.ac.uk/~lismd/dorset/churches/wimborne...]. The basin is octagonal with straight sides that are adorned with a pair of trefoiled arches each; the basin is supported by eight slender colonnettes also of "Purbeck marble" [a type of limestone] and a central torsade column of a different material; the lower base is also octagonal with several mouldings. There is a Victorian oak cover on the font.