Monkleigh

Noted and illustrated in Stabb (1908): "The font is Norman, and the decoration rather unusual. It resembles very much an inverted lamp-shade, round the top is a plain band, near the bottom the bowl decreases in size and then expands. If the bowl was made of some textile substance, one would describe it as being pleated and tied in at the waist, as the the carving is done to resemble pleats; it is mounted on a shaft." Noted in Pevsner (1952): "Font. Norman, circular, of a very uncommon design. The bowl is fluted, and at the top of the shaft there is also fluting, pleated outward and then again inward, a little like a Chinese lantern." Described and illustrated in Clarke (1916): "This font is of unique design, but it is more curious than beautiful [...] This design is a reversal of the channelled flutings which appear on many Romanesque fonts, but the panels have the same relative proportions as the flutings, and undoubtedly are allied to them." Clarke (ibid.) is probably right to question the present (ca. 1916) shape of this font: "I am inclined to think that this font that this font has been altered; that it was constructed as a girdled tub, and that some modern Philistine cut the lower half into the form of a base and shaft. The meaningless row of insignificant cones trimming the bottom of the shaft like a frill on a petticoat, could never have sprung from the brain of the original designer, whose conception was at least bold. If. in Imagination, the lower part of a girdled tub-font, such as Cheriton Bishop, were substituted for the paltry shaft, the mind's eye would, I feel sure, see the font in its original form." [We are grateful to Dr. Roger Peters, of www.wissensdrang.com, for his permission to use the transcription of and images from Stabb (1908)]