Saltford / Salford (Somerset)

There is a 1773 wash-on-paper drawing of the font and cover of this church by Samuel Hieronymus Grimm (1733-1794) in the collections of the British Library: "A drawing in ink of the hexagonal stone font in Salford Church" [British Library Online Gallery [ref.: Additional MS 15546] [www.bl.uk/onlinegallery/onlineex/topdrawings/s/largeimage85636.html] [accessed 26 October 2011]]. Lewis (1876) writes: "The font is one of the most interesting in the neighbourhood. It is heptagonal in shape with seven angles' heads at the base of the shaft." Wade & Wade (1929) write: "Its church, restored in 1851, is without interest, though it has a good Norm[an] font, with roughly carved heads below the bowl". Noted in Pevsner (1958) as a "A remarkable, seemingly C13 piece. Circular top but octagonal base with eight very well carved heads". Noted and illustrated in the Parish website [http://www.st.marys.freeuk.com/history.htm] [accessed 20 February 2008]: "[The font] is Norman, or perhaps Saxon. It is said that it was removed from the Church, desecrated by defacing the sculptured heads by Parliamentarian soldiers after the Battle of Lansdown and subsequently found in use as a cattle trough, before being returned to the Church and mounted on a new base." The basin is round at the upper rim , becoming polygonal on the underbowl, and it may very well have been altered from its original shape, that of a tub perhaps. The font is either 13th-century or perhaps a composite, the base with the heads probably later than the basin. There is considerable damage to the upper sides of the basin, repaired with stone inserts. The present wooden cover appears modern, perhaps Victorian, but the 1773 drawing by Grimm [cf. supra] shows an earlier polygonal domed cover, of a design fairly common in the 17th century.