Thorpe Abbotts / Thorp / Thorp Abbots / Thorp Cornwaleis / Thorp Magna / Thorpe Abbotts

Blomefield (1805-1810) writes: "In Domesday we find, that the church is dedicated to All the Saints, and the rector had a house and nine acres of land [...] The steeple is round at bottom and octangular at top, having a clock and two bells; the chancel, church, and south porch are tiled." Blomefield (ibid.) names "Peter de Tatington" as first recorded rector, in 1303. The present font is noted in White's Directory of 1883: "the font is handsomely carved with the evangelistic symbols, &c." Described in Pevsner & Wilson (1999): "Octagonal, Perp[endicular]. Four lions against the stem, the signs of the Evangelists and four demi-figures of angels against the bowl." Described and illustrated in the Parish web site http://www.allsaintsthorpeabbotts.com/interior.shtml] [accessed 31 August 2009]: "The octagonal freestone font of the “evangelistic” style once had a smooth surface, having been in filled with plaster at the time of the Civil War. So we now find ourselves with a 700 year old font with carving as crisp as the day it was done not having suffered the attentions of our more puritan worshippers of the C17th. The Reverend William Wallace, suspecting the plain surface, discovered the carvings by removing the plaster with his pocketknife during his restoration of the church in the 1850's. Evangelistic fonts, so named because of the carvings of symbols of the four Evangelists, occur in other Norfolk churches but are all within seven miles of navigable water. Four of the eight sides of the font are carvings of the Evangelists who wrote the four Gospels, Matthew, the winged man, Mark the winged lion, Luke the winged ox and John the eagle. These are interspersed with four other carvings, a plain cross for St George, a cross moline, a crown with 2 arrows saltire (crossed) for St Edmund and a merchants mark. Underneath are 8 cherubim. Interestingly there is another font of this type in St Leonards Billingford, our next door church. However it was not so lucky and was clearly damaged probably during the 17C." [NB: the base is rather unusual with the combination of obelisks and buttresses, and could be a later replacement of the original one].