Groede / De Groe

We have no information on the baptismal font of the 13th-century church here, but the Wandelingen door Nederland met pen en potlood. Deel 7, Jacobus Craandijk, Kruseman & Tjeenk Willink, Haarlem, 1884, mentions a lump of stone at the entrance of the park that could perhaps be the base of a former baptismal font of this church. A communication from Pol Herman to BSI (e-mail of 7 February 2022) conveys photographs of a fragment of al old stone font here and comments from Huib van Iwaarden, a Groede local resident: "My great-grandmother and -father (named Luteijn on mother's side) lived diagonally across from the entrance of the church. The baptismal font was put in the ground in front of the entrance of the church around 1650 and served then and later in the carriage and chariot times as a step-on and -off for the carriage-goers who went to church. Or to mount the horse. This was of course also a sneer at the Catholics!! A baptismal font, something sacred in the RC. church as a stepping stone for the reformed churchgoers after the Reformation! My great-grandparents and grandparents also used this font in this way. Also my mother as a little girl who went from Zuidzande to visit her grandparents in Groede." A further communication from Pol Herman to BSI (e-mail of 15 February) reports: "in the Grote Kerk at Groede are kept the fragments of the mid-twelfth-century Tournai-type Romanesque baptismal font of the lost village of Nieuwerkerke, found on the 6th of May 2010"