Redditch

Woodward & Bartleet (1866) mention two objects used as baptismal fonts in their history of Bordesley Abbey: one was in the old Chapel of St. Stephen, near Bordesley Abbey, and is reported to have been still inside the chapel, ca. 1800, under the western gallery, "on the ground, a piece of stone shaped and hollowed like a mortar. This served as a font in which to baptize the grandfathers of the present inhabitants of Redditch". Woodward & Batleet (ibid.) remark that the Abbey and the Chapel of St. Stephen were two diferent buildings, the latter, also known as 'Bordesley Chapel' and 'Old Chapel', located on the right hand of the road leading from Redditch to the Abbey Meadows; the Chapel was about one hundred yards from the Abbey buildings and was believed to have ben used for parochial purposes. The Chapel of St. Stephen was, according to Woodward & Bartleet (ibid.) demolished soon after 1805, and "the hollowed stone used as font [cf. supra] fell into the hands of a man locally known as Dick Turpin, who for a long time used as a drinking-trough -- for foul, a moment of gratitude for kindness received, he gave it to the son of the landlord of the Plough and Harrow, from whom it came into the hands of Captain Bartleet." Miller (1890) mentions the "old Abbey of Bordesley", as being about a mile northeast of the town here, but gives no details of its church. The University of Reading's Bordesley Abbey Project [http://www.reading.ac.uk/bordesley/Abbey_Gateway.htm] [accessed 3 June 2010] suggests a sate for the Romanesque abbey church of ca. 1150. [NB: we have no information on the mortar/font, or of the font from the Abbey church [if there was a separate one]]. Brooks & Pevsner (2007) report a font "of red Devonshire marble" with a cover "by Leslie T. Moore, 1925", in the 19th-century Parish Church of St. Stephen, on Church Green.