Britford No. 1 / Burford

Holmes (1922) notes: "The Norman font of Purbeck marble". Buck (1951) writes: "When the church was restored in 1873 by George Edmund Street a new font of Early English style was installed. The bowl is hexafoil-shaped on the outside and has a shallow circular inner basin; it is mounted on a centre stem having six engaged shafts, and is of Chilmark stone. The spirelike cover was made in 1916." Described and illustrated in Shortt (1964) as a late replacement [19th-century] of an earlier font given to a South Australian town ca. 1877 [cf. Index entry for Britford No. 2]; the multi-lobe basin has vertical sides that are decorated with a row of large dog-tooth motif all araund the upper 1/3; the base is formed by a cluster of columns with moulded capitals and bases. It is raised on a circular plinth. The tall wooden cover has an octagonal lower volume with vertical side decorated with trefoild windows and quatrefoil motifs, the arris ending in pinnacles; the upper volume is pyramidal and the font is raised by a counterweight (?) apparatus. [NB: we have no information on the earlier font of this church, but it could not be the one noted in Holmes [cf. supra], since the old font had already been replaced by 1873, as Buck reports]