This is the font at Stanton St Bernard. It's not St Bernard's church though, it's All Saints. Which is slightly peculiar. I can't find why the village is St Bernard's. And we saw no St Bernards dogs either.
The church looks disappointingly sterile from the outside, rebuilt by a Victorian vicar. Were these churches really all falling down as badly as they always make out? Or was it some kind of job creation scheme / backhander for the local builders. Who knows.
Inside, most people's eyes will be drawn to the huge mural that covers the end of the nave, with Jesus sitting over the chancel arch. It's very unusual, very Art Nouveau. You can read a bit about it in the Trilithon magazine. It was painted by Maude Berry in around 1900.
But we were more taken by the font and its superb pleats. We're learning that sometimes Mr Pevsner didn't seem to be paying much attention to our beloved fonts. In this case he said "Circular, Norman, with a top band of flat zigzag and a wider band below which seem [sic] to be C19." Mr Pevsner, no no NO. The whole thing is beautifully proportioned and balanced - if you imagine it with the pleaty area unpleated, and just part of the straight bowl, it wouldn't look right. But more convincingly - the clinching thing as far as B and I were concerned - the pleats are the usual delightfully off-kilter style that we know from so many other Norman examples. Why would have a Victorian person have messed with the font, and then cut it wonky? It seems very Norman to us.
The pleats were not easy to draw - a classic example of how Knowing what you're looking at means you can't See. You may think we're crackers but I think I can truthfully say we both felt rather fond of this font by the time we'd sat there staring and struggling for so long. It's an interesting variation of a lovely simple zigzaggy design.
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