Bradford-on-Avon No. 1 / Bradeford [Domesday] / Great Bradford

An article by David Derbyshire, science correspondent of the NEWS.TELEGRAPH of 20 October 2003 [www.telegraph.co.uk] informs of the descovery of a Roman villa with its own chapel and baptistery in Bradford-on-Avon. The accompanying illustration shows a baptismal font of the 'raised-tank' type with an octagonal basin surrounded by an outer lower wall or parapet, much like the Italian fonts of the time (Ravenna, etc.]. "A fifth-century font and baptistry were built into the ornate third-century mosaic floor of an nusual double villa in Wiltshire [at Bradford-on-Avon]. Although there are older chapels at Silchester (Hants.), Richborough (Kent), and Colchester (Essex), archaeologists say this is the earliest example of a landowner converting rooms inside his home for baptisms in post-Roman Britain." [source: "Sites, Monuments and Collections", ICMA News [www.medievalart.org/news/sites.html], [abridged from www.telegraph.co.uk 12/03]]. The web site of the Wiltshire County Council at www.wiltshire.gov.uk informs that the archaeological site was re-opened in 2003 and that "a further mosaic was discovered. However this has been overlaid and cut into by a stone structure believed to be an early Christian baptistery." Noted in Ferguson (2009). [cf. Index entry for Bradford on Avon No. 2 for a baptismal font of the Perpendicular period in the Holy Trinity Church of the same town]