Christon

No entry found for Christon in the Domesday survey. The entry for this church in Rutter (1829) erroneaously describes the font as round and plain: "The font is plain and circular, of the Norman character." Noted in Pridham (1897, 2013) as a baptismal font of 1100-1135, abandoned for a long time and used as a trough. The entry for this church in Historic England [Listing NGR: ST3795857287] notes: "Parish church (Anglican). C12, C14, C16, 1875. [...] C12 font, square with cross and chevron decoration on 3 sides, stands on plain circular capital on plinth". Described and illustrated in the CRSBI (2020): "Located at the NW angle of the SE part of the nave, thus unusually to the E of the S door, the font has room to the W and N and a little to the S. The decoration on the N and W faces of the bowl is easily enjoyed, but that on the S face is not so easy to appreciate. Resting directly, without a plinth, on the Victorian floor, the base is a rectangular block with chamfered upper surface. The stem, in two very unequal blocks, is cylindrical. Above a large roll, the bowl is a square tub; the three decorated sides carry their exquisite designs within border rolls. The S face carries several adjacent saltires. The W face carries five very fine scallops separated by sharply angular darts (the scallops having fine blank and flat mouths joined in their upper halves to form a strong connection at the top of the face). The N face consists of two very fine saltires, or stars, separated bya shallow roll. All the decoration on the font is executed with a confident sense of overall design, an awareness of how to balance variety with homogeneity, and a highly polished finish (evident in the tooling detail). It is unfortunate that the font no longer has any lead. Metal remnants at the centre of all four sides of the rim may be evidence of previous lock-fittings. It will be seen that there is a circular basin at the centre of the bowl’s floor."