Holy Island / Lindisfarne

INFORMATION

FontID: 09861LIN
Church/Chapel: Parish Church of St. Mary
Church Patron Saints: St. Mary the Virgin
Country Name: England
Location: Northumberland, North East
Directions to Site: Located 8 km from Belford, 20 km from Berwick, in the North Sea [crossing to the island by road only on low tide]
Historical Region: formerly Durham?
Century and Period: , Medieval
The National Gazetteer of 1868 reports a very large font of stone in this church. Noted in Pevsner (1957): "Font. Probably C18, with a fat, bulgy octagonal baluster stem". The font is noted and illustrated in the Parish website [http://www.lindisfarne.org.uk/stmary/restoration.htm] [accessed 21 January 2010], where a recent renovation [phase I completed in January 2010] re-sited the font to the centre aisle. The font has a moulded shallow octagonal basin on the bulgy base described in Pevsner [cf. supra]; it appears to have a gilded cover; it is raised on a modern octagonal plinth. [NB: this parish church, located next to the Holy Island priory, is said to date from the 13th century or earlier, but we have no information on the earlier font]

MEDIUM AND MEASUREMENTS

Material: stone
Font Shape: octagonal (mounted)
Basin Interior Shape: round
Basin Exterior Shape: octagonal

LID INFORMATION

Apparatus: no
Notes: [cf. FontNotes]

REFERENCES

The National Gazetteer: a Topographical Dictionary of the British Isles, London: Virtue & Co., 1868
Pevsner, Nikolaus, Northumberland, Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1957