CHAPTER IV 



CHURCH AND PARISH 



OUR Parish Church (plate vn.), that is to say, the Church 

 of St. Mary the Virgin, Tidenham, Gloucestershire, in which 

 parish my father's Sedbury property was situated, was of 

 considerable antiquarian interest, as, although the hamlet 

 of Churchend in which it stands is not mentioned in the 

 Saxon survey of 956, the original church was in existence 

 in the year 1071. The fabric of the church when I knew it 

 was of later date, and, as shown by the accompanying 

 sketch, chiefly in the architecture of the fourteenth century, 

 excepting the south doorways of the nave and chancel and 

 the tall narrow trefoil-headed windows in the north aisle. 

 The chief point of archaeological interest, however, lies in 

 its possession of a leaden font (plate vn.) in perfect repair, 

 referable from its style to the transition period of Saxon and 

 Anglo-Norman architecture, and considered not likely to be 

 more recent in date than the eleventh century. The subject 

 derives additional interest from the circumstance of the 

 precise correspondence of this font in Tidenham Church 

 with the leaden font in the church of the adjoining small 

 parish of Llancaut, making it demonstrably certain that both 

 the fonts were cast from the same mould. 1 The decorations 



1 Alfred C. Fryer, Ph.D., M.A., begins an admirable, fully illustrated 

 paper on " Leaden Fonts " in the Archaeological Journal, March, 1900, 

 with the following statements : There are 27 leaden fonts situated in 

 12 counties in the south, east and west of England 8 in Gloucester, 3 

 in Berks, 3 in Kent, 3 in Sussex, 2 in Oxford, 2 in Hereford, i in Derby, 

 i in Dorset, i in Hants, i in Lincoln, i in Norfolk and i in Surrey. 

 Several of these date from the latter part of the nth and the 1 2th 

 centuries. A few belonged to the i3th, i4th and i5th centuries, 

 and the latest has the date 1689 impressed upon it. They are all tub- 

 shaped, with the exception of two, namely, a hexagon and a cylindrical 

 bowl. The older fonts all possessed covers, and several retain the 

 markings to which the locks were attached. The deepest bowl (outside 

 measurement) is 16 inches. The most shallow bowl is at Parham in 

 Sussex, and it is only 8 inches in depth. The diameters also vary con- 

 siderably from 32 inches to i8 inches. (Ed.). 



