Keevil No. 2

The Victoria County History (Wiltshire, vol. 8, 1965) notes: "There was a church at Keevil by the late 11th century, for it was then granted to Shaftesbury Abbey. [...] Ernulf of Hesdin, the Domesday tenant of Keevil, gave the church, with its tithes and land, to the nuns of Shaftesbury when his daughter took the veil there, and his gift was confirmed by his son. [...] In the late 14th or early 15th century the church may have been rebuilt as a cruciform building, probably after the monks of Edington acquired the rectory in 1393. [...] In the early 16th century the church was remodelled in the style of the time, and a south aisle was added. The tower was also either added or rebuilt. [...] The font rests on a circular pedestal surrounded by four small shafts, perhaps of the 14th century; the octagonal bowl with quatrefoil panels was either remodelled or erected to replace a previous one in the early 16th century. In the early 19th century it was removed from the church, and a large octagonal stoup of the same period was used as a font instead. The old font was bought from a mason by the Vicar of Steeple Ashton and was for some time in the garden of the vicarage there. It was restored to the church later in the century. (fn. 9) The stoup is now in the vestry." Noted in Pevsner & Cherry (1975): "Fonts. Both Perp[endicular] and octagonal with pointed quatrefoils, the one small, the other big." One of them is described and illustrated by Raymond Ward [www.rward.clare.net]: "The font rests on a circular pedestal surrounded by four small shafts, in Perpendicular style and probably of the 14th century; the octagonal bowl with pointed quatrefoil panels was either remodelled or erected to replace a previous one early in the 16th century."