Beaconsfield / Bekenesfeld

No entry found for Beaconsfield in the Domesday survey. Sheahan (1862) remarks that the chancel of this church has some Early English features, but mentions no font in it. The Victoria County History (Buckingham, vol. 3, 1925) reports a modern baptismal font in this church which, the VCH (ibid.) suggests, "was probably built during the second half of the 15th century". The present font consists of a quatrefoil-shaped basin the vertical sides of which are decorated with a lovely pattern made of five rows of four-petalled flowers all around; underbowl curving onto the stem, formed by a set of colonnettes clustered around the main shaft; the colonnettes of the base project up onto the underbowl and end in a four-petalled flower; the bases of the colonnettes are moulded. The wooden font cover has a quatrefoil base on which is a tower-like construction of open-work; raised by a pulley system; probably contemporary with the font, of the time of the 19th-century renovation of the old church [NB: we have no information on the original font of the 15th-century church, and there was an earlier church there before the Perpendicular one]