Llanddew No. 3

Westwood (1885) wrote on a curious stone in Llanddew St David's, the drawing of which had been sent to him by a Mr. Cobb: a "stone which, inverted, was placed as a finial at the point of the east gable, but which, when examined, must evidently have been used as a piscina, being too small for a font. The larger, upper part, (on which it rested on the gable) is a quadrangular, being 9 inches square, with cable-moulding round the top edge, and another similar cable about 6 inches lower. The lower portion of this capital, as it might be called, is 3 inches deep, formed into wide scallops; and the basal portion, or stem of the structure, is quadrilobed, measuring 7 inches across the widest part, and 5 inches between the sunk part of the lobes. The upper part has a well formed cistern, 5 inches square, gradually diminishing to a hole one and a half inches in diameter, which passes out on a curve to the back, or apparently unsculptured side, at the junction of the capital with the basal pillar." Westwood (ibid.) continues with a description of the lack of purpose of such a piece in its [then] location, and investigated the recess in which the square top of the object piscina would have fitted, "but the drain in the stone would not fit". Westwood (ibid.) then suggests "that it was a holy water stoup, or was connected with the font, and used in the office of holy baptism as a receptacle for the water which had escaped from the head of the baptised infant, --a use of which another analogous instances have been traced to by my niece, Miss E. Swann, whose elaborate memoir on the subject will, I trust, shortly be published". [NB: notwithstanding the issue of the original location in this church, all appearances indicate that the object was more likely a piscina than a holy-water stoup, hence the presence of a drain, indispensable in a piscina but rarely found in a stoup; Westwood's other suggestion that it may have been a baptism-related receptacle is less likely, as we have found no record of early instances of a drained basin completely separate from a font -- nonetheless it does not preclude its possible use as a stoup in the past of Llanddew St David's]] [source: transcription in R.F. Vincent & M.E. Vincent (2003-2006) [www.freewebs.com/llanddew/churchofstdavid.htm#glynne] [accessed 17 December 2006]]. [We are grateful to Reginald F. Vincent & Mark E. Vincent, of www.freewebs.com/llanddew/churchofstdavid.htm#glynne, for the information on, and photographs of the Llanddew St David's baptismal objects]