only of the present chancel. It appears to me that we
can distinctly trace the point at which the old wall ended and the apse
began.
(b) I would call special attention to the convex buttress
on the south side of the nave. It is very peculiar. It cannot have been
a staircase in later times, as there seems to be no reason whatever for
a staircase at that particular place in a building of the same size as
the present. It is not unlike circular projections in the Saxon towers
of Sompting and Brixworth.
There is probably little foundation for the conjecture that
the old church might have ended somewhere near this point, and then the
buttress might have had something to do with the support of the western
front, or have been a staircase up to the old belfry.
(c) What some have called the "Leper's Window" on
the S.W. of the chancel. Is it a window or a door? If a window, is it in
situ? or has it been moved there from some other part of the church?
It is, in my opinion, a door occupying the place of (if not itself
actually) the entrance to the early Roman building. Its component |
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materials argue great antiquity.
(d) Last, and most interesting of all, is the font, which
is almost unique, being built up of various stones in different tiers.
It is circular or tub-shaped, about two feet six inches high, and
consists of a rim, three tiers, and a modern base. The three tiers, and
a modern base. The three tiers are made up of some twenty-four distinct
stones rounded externally and fitted in their place. The lower tier is
embellished with a continuous pattern of scrollwork; the second with
groups of circles intertwining with one another (what Hasted calls a
kind of hieroglyphical true-lovers'-knot), with the exception of one
stone which has carved on it six comparatively plain circles; the third
tier is of a completely different character, exhibiting arches
intersecting one another. At the top is a rim, the ornamentation of
which corresponds with that of the two lower tiers, except one part on
which there is a kind of dogtooth-work, like stars cut in half. It has
been suggested, with great probability, that the outer half of the upper
rim's thickness |