Hamstall Ridware

The English Heritage website [www.english-heritage.org.uk/server/show/ConBar.4792] [accessed 28 June 2007] reports and illustrates a "Font. C12. In poor condition; overgrown with vegetation [...] east of south porch of Church of St Michael and All Saints, Blithbury Road [...] Hamstall Ridware". Described and illustrated in The Corpus of Romanesque Sculpture in Britain and Ireland (2005) [http://www.crsbi.ac.uk/ed/st/hamst/index.htm] [accessed 28 June 2007]: "The church has three fonts, or at least three bowls, two 12thc., one inside and one out, and the third the 19thc. piece that is actually used [...] Outside the nave, to the E of the S porch is a hexagonal font bowl in use as a planter. The interior is circular and apparently unlined. It has plain faces, a chamfered upper rim, and nook-shafts carved in the angles, with capitals and water holding attic bases. The shafts are described from left to right (anticlockwise) starting at the E: Shaft 1 (E): Double-strand cable moulded shaft and triple-scallop capital with conical wedges between the cones. The abacus is lost. -- Shaft 2: Plain shaft and triple scallop capital with recessed shields. -- Shaft 3: Plain shaft and triple scallop capitals with wedges between the cones and chevron on the abacus. -- Shaft 4: As 3, the W face is damaged. -- Shaft 5: As 3. -- Shaft 6: Chevron decorated shaft and triple scallop capital. The upper part of the abacus is mostly lost, but signs of chevron decoration remain." The basin has the upper rim chamfered and badly damaged. There is no base in sight and the basin appears to be used as flower-pot. [NB: could this be the original font of St. Michael's? The other Norman font presently at St. Michael's was originally from Pipe Ridware -- cf. corresponding Index entry].