Kirkbride No. 1

No individual entry for Kirkbride found in the Domesday survey [NB: the Domesday survey did not cover this area of England]. The Mannix & Whellan Directory of Cumberland for 1847 recorded that "a large holy water trough has been [...] found in the garden, and is now placed in the church", as well as larger font in this church [transcription in www.stevebulman.f9.co.uk/cumbria/kirkbride.html]. Cox (1913) mentions only one: "The font is notable". Pevsner (1967) notes two fonts as well: "One small, square, with rounded corners, a lamb and cross, and some dog-tooth and fleurons down the edges." The entry for this church in Historic England [Listing NGR: NY2296057329] notes: "Parish church. C12 with C19 restoration. [...] Square-bowled font with knobbly leaf decoration around the underside and trefoil and quatrefoil panel decorations on each side. Small square stoup in chancel has rounded corners and carved lamb and cross decoration." The entry for this church by James King in the CRSBI (2019) notes: "The bowl of the font is all that survives of it. On each of the outer faces is carved a simple, but very worn and damaged arch with capitals and pilaster-like columns on the sides. On the front face is a Mystic Lamb with cross. Below the lamb is further decoration, but it is difficult to determine exactly what is shows. The whole scene is surrounded by an arch, carved as if there was a small, inner roll moulding. Beneath this are simple capitals and shafts. This face of the stone is heavily worn. Carved on each of the outer, vertical corner edges of the stone is a series of three decorative motifs, the central somewhat flower-like and the other two dogtooth. The interior of the bowl is cut partially angled, but curved toward the front. The lower section of the stone gives the the appearance of having been cut back at some point. [...] Dates for the earliest parts of the church, including the chancel arch, have been suggested as both Anglo-Saxon and Norman. As Whiteside wrote in 1899, “It has been confidently asserted that the chancel arch is Saxon. No doubt it is at least early Norman”. Hyde and Pevsner described the font in a Norman context, but without suggesting a more specific time-period. Cox stated that the earliest parts of the church were early Norman and that the church structure included re-used Roman stone. It does seem not unlikely that the present church was built no later than the earlier part of the 12thc. In his article of 1899, Whiteside stated that the loose font had been dug up in the rectory garden in 1813 and that it had previously been described as a piscina (see also: Bower, 1893). But Whiteside pointed out that there is no drainage hole and suggested instead that it was more likely to have been used as a holy water stoup. He also commented that this might not have been its original use and that ‘“Some consider it to be the fragment of an ancient cross, which is not unlikely”. From 1813 until 1895 it was fixed on a bracket on the N wall of the chancel. The font is certainly enigmatic. The lower section appears to have been cut back and the upper section is either cut back or very worn (or both), which makes it impossible to know how tall it originally was. The very flat back face does seem to suggest that the stone was intended to be placed in front of or attached to a wall. The decoration, which includes dogtooth, also suggests that the carved stone is likely to be later than the construction of the church. [cf. Index entry for Kirkbride No. 2 for a larger font of a later period in this church]