High Bray / Highbray

Described and illustrated in Clarke (1915): "As it stands a circular pedestal font of Devonian rock; it has clearly been transformed from an earlier shape. The bowl bears the stamp of two far-removed periods of workmanship. It is encircled 1 1/2 inches below the rim by a band of incised saw-tooth ornament; the obtuse [?] angle points to an early date in the Norman period; the ground is filled with irregular hatchet markings. Below are two flat, square-edged mouldings and inch wide, with 3 inches of plain surface between them. All this is worked with the axe. The lower part of the bowl has a row of shell ornament of sixteenth-century Renaissance type, worked with the chisel. It has no relation whatever to the Romanesque type of palmetto which is found on the font of West Anstey, a few miles away, and which appears on fourteen fonts in South Devon. The appearance of the High Bray font suggests that it was originally a bucket-shape of early Norman period, plain, except for the band of saw-tooth and square mouldings; the church was rebuilt early in the sixteenth century, and possibly at that time the font was sawn in two; the upper half cut to the bowl form, and the shell ornament then so much in vogue chiselled on it, while the lower half was shaped into a cylindrical shafy, and the surface dressed smooth with the chisel." Clarke, however, feels that there are enough odd signs on the font to suggest that what we see today is not what the 16th-century stonemason rendered, especially the abrupt end of the 'shell' motifs; she then offers the explanation that "it must have at some time suffered severe damage, for large patches of slate have been inserted to repair the upper part of the bowl". Clarke further informs that the unlined inner basin "is cut roughly to quatrefoil shape", again, a later modification. Noted in Pevsner (1952): "Font. Norman, circular, with one shallow zigzag frieze, and on the collar palmettes."