Coleford

No individual entry for this Coleford found in the Domesday survey. The entry for this parish in the Victoria County History (Gloucester, vol. 5, 1996) notes: "A chapel recorded in the centre of Coleford in 1489 [...] was presumably built by local people for their own use. p...] Coleford's medieval chapel, in the town centre, bore a dedication to ST. JOHN THE BAPTIST in 1534, [...] but its successor on the same site was known as St. John the Evangelist in the mid 1870s. [...] The old chapel was a small single-cell building with a west bellcot and porch in 1608. [...] In 1880 it was replaced by a larger church in Boxbush Road and in 1882 it was demolished, the stone being used to build a school next to the new church [...] The new church in Boxbush Road was begun in 1878 and consecrated in 1880. It was then called St. John the Baptist, [...] but in 1994 was ST. JOHN THE EVANGELIST"; the VCH entry does not mention a font in it. The font, originally from the old church of St. John -of which only the tower has survived- was installed in the new parish church, St. James; it consists of an octagonal basin with tapering sides decorated with floral motifs inscribed in quatrefoils; the underbowl chamfer [cf. supra] has a graded moulding all around; the octagonal stem is plain but the lower base is moulded. It appears to have undergone some re-tooling, but could be originally Perpendicular.