DERBYSHIRE FONTS. 



6i 



There is really nothing more to remark with regard to this 

 font, save that it is a matter for serious wonderment how it 

 ever came to be preserved at all during the ages in which any- 

 thing with the taint of antiquity about it, anything not severely 

 plain and puritanical, was consigned by those in charge of our 

 Parish Churches to either the churchyard, or secular or 

 horticultural purposes, should it, by any curious chance, avoid 

 being smashed up. 



Fig. 7. — Hartington. 



Then, on the other hand, the apparent mutilation of the 

 original bowl may have been accomplished by these very church- 

 wreckers, and these fragments that remain pieced together and 

 patched up by a more scrupulous and more sane-minded genera- 

 tion. 



Hartington. 



The font in the border village of Hartington is another of 

 these traceried examples of the Decorated style, but is more 



