Tonbridge / Tunbridge / Tonebrige

INFORMATION

FontID: 12140TON
Object Type: Baptismal Font1?
Church/Chapel: Parish Church of St. Peter and St. Paul
Church Patron Saints: St. Peter & St. Paul
Country Name: England
Location: Kent, South East
Directions to Site: Located off the A21, 6 km N of Tunbridge Wells
Font Location in Church: [cf. FontNotes]
Century and Period: 11th - 14th century, Medieval
Font Notes:
No font mentioned in Glynne (1877) [his visit to the church dated 1833]. A late font is noted in Newman (1980): "Font. 1766, of veined white marble, now disused". The Parish website [http://tonbridgeparishchurch.org.uk/article.php?id=36] [accessed 17 February 2010] reports the 19th-century renovations, when "a new font (now in the churchyard) was installed […] In the midst of all these renovations the Headmaster of Tonbridge School saw fit to claim the old font, which he used as a bird bath. Despite the request for its return to three successive headmasters, it was not until a lay headmaster arrived in 1930 that the font was returned to us." This same source dates the present church -there were earlier Anglo-Saxon chapels- to soon after the building of the castle in the 11th century. [NB: we have no recent information on the present whereabouts of the old font]

MEDIUM AND MEASUREMENTS

Material: stone

REFERENCES

Glynne, Steven Richard, Sir, Notes on the churches of Kent, London: John Murray, 1877
Taylor, Richard, How to read a church, London: Rider (Ebury Press, Random House), 2004