Balsall No. 2 / Balshall / Temple Balsall / Temple-Balshall

The Victoria County History (Warwick, vol. 4, 1947) notes: "The church of ST. MARY (fn. 28) was built by the Knights Templars c. 1290. After the Suppression in 1540 it fell into decay and became roofless. In 1662 it was reroofed and restored to use by Lady Katherine Leveson and Lady Anne Holbourne, and it served as a chapel for the adjacent almshouses founded by the former in 1677. It became a parish church in 1863. The church was restored in 1849 by Sir Gilbert Scott [...] The font is modern." The VCH entry (ibid.) quotes from the Gentleman's Magazine, 1838 (2), p. 271: "In 1541 there was 'a faunte stone of tymbre lyned wt lede'. In 1[5]38 there was a small octagonal font, 'formed out of a piscina which stood at the south-east corner of the chapel', and also a disused font 'of bowl form, about seven feet in circumference, very boldly and elegantly sculptured with foliage'." The VCH (ibid.) adds: "There is also a small modern church of St. Peter, Balsall Common, built of red brick." This font is noted and illustrated in Aidan McRae Thomson [www.flickr.com/photos/amthomson/3057153236/in/set-72157604534203453/] [accessed 22 November 2009]: "The seventeenth century font at St Mary's, church Balsall, covered with large acanthus leaf decoration. This is the font provided in 1663 by Lady Anne Holbourne when she restored the derelict chapel to use as a parish church (prior to then it may never have possesed one). It was replaced by a neo-gothic version in Gilbert Scott's restoration in the 1840s and spent the next century and a half languishing in a nearby garden, and later a farm. Only in 1984 was it restored to the church for which it was made." The wooden font is round and flat; modern. [cf. Index entry for church Balsall for an earlier wooden font now probably disappeared]