Norwich No. 26 / Norwic

There are ten entries for Norwich [variant spelling] in the Domesday survey [https://opendomesday.org/place/TG2308/norwich/] [accessed 13 October 2020], one of which records "22.7 churches. 2.57 church lands" in it; a separate entry records a priest and a church in it. Noted in Pevsner & Wilson (1997): "Font. A rural and charming C15 piece. Octagonal, with two wild men and two wild women against the bowl." Baptismal font of the 15th century, Perpendicular style. The octagonal basin has vertical sides, the panels alternating the symbols of the evangelists with plain shields held by angels, all in deep-set windows, much like on the fonts of Saxmundham and Oulton, which it resembles in general terms; the upper frame of each side has four rosettes; unlike the fonts mentioned above, however, the heads on the underbowl chamfer of this font are not angels by finely-carved realistic human heads alternating with heads of fabulous animals; below them, a band of foliage motif ends the lower underbowl. Like the fonts at Saxmundham and Oulton, this font has a base that incorporates figures and buttresses; the figures, some of them damaged, alternate with the buttresses which, in this font, have become full-roofed and incorporated trefoil arches inside; the figures appear to be woodwooses [cf. supra for Pevsner & Wilson's identification as male and female]. A plain wooden lid covers the basin. [We are grateful to Jonathan Plunkett for the photograph of this font, taken by his father, George Plunkett, in 1937-1938]