Norwich No. 31 / 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. The baptismal font now [2005] in the parish church of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, in Attleborough, Norfolk, has had a pilgrimage. As reported in the local Attleborough Parish web site [www.stmaryatthleborough.org.uk], "this font has only stood in Attleborough since 1975, having been brought from the redundant St. Mary Magdalen, [Sprowston?] Norwich, which had, in turn, acquired it from Booton. It replaces Barrett's font [cf. Index entry fro Attleborough St Mary's No. 1], designed in 1845 by Thomas Lucas [...]" This same web site describes the ex-Booton font now in Attleborough: "The font has shields alternating with quatrefoils. The style of the font, particularly the comical faces below the bowl, suggests the early fifteenth century, but the double roses [...] seem to be more than decorative and are deliberately placed. They imply Tudor allegiance after 1485, the mason having updated a traditional form." The font consists of an octagonal basin of straight sides raised on a stem made of clustered columns (one central with eight attached outer colonnettes are attached, and an octagonal plinth; the sides of the basin are deeply carved, as indicated above, with panels alternating four shields in octafoil windows with four Tudor roses in quatrefoil windows in a circle; the underbowl has heads at the angles and Tudor roses between them; the colonnettes of the base have moulded capitals and bases. The wooden lid is in the Jacobean style of a flat-base-with-eight-ribs-on-a-pivot construction, with a dove finial, but appears modern. Pevsner & Wilson's 1999 entry for Attleborough note that the font was "installed in 1975" but do not give the origin. Noted and illustrated in Knott (2008): " The late medieval font is elegant enough, but as Mortlock records, it is of historical interest because it was originally at Booton, and then when the church there was rebuilt it was removed to St Mary Magdalene at Sprowston in north Norwich."