Upton Hellions / Upton Helions

Noted in Stabb (1908): "The font is old with a square basin resting on a circular shaft with four smaller shafts, not separate but forming part of the main support." Described and illustrated in Clarke (1919): "This font has a cushion bowl [...] with the tops of the semicircular faces meeting at the corners; but a modern restorer has mounted it on a support in the Early English style, with one central column flanked by four smaller ones. It is made of freestone [Beer stone]; each face is covered with vertical dressings, except for a border an inch wide, round both edges of each semicircle, which has diagonal dressings. This is probably modern work; all the stone seems to have been refaced. The plinth appears to be original; it is made of five separate blocks 3 1/2 inches deep; three are of veined marble and two of lava. It rests on a slab 1 1/2 inches thick. The soft stone of the bowl has been cut into at all four angles by a wire strained round to accommodate the atrocities which pass under the name of 'Church Decorations'. A practice leading to such irremediable damage cannot be too strongly reprobated." Noted in Pevsner (1959): "Font. Norman, in the shape of a big block-capital." [We are grateful to Dr. Roger Peters, of www.wissensdrang.com, for his permission to use the transcription of and images from Stabb (1908)]. Noted in Thurlby (2006) as a baptismal font of the Norman period in the cushion-capital style.