If we were transported back in time to stand outside the church when it was first built, probably 900 years ago, we would not recognise it. There was no tower, both the nave and chancel were smaller and there was no south aisle, side chapel or vestry. In the following two centuries the church gradually expanded as the population increased and as the services became more elaborate. By the start of the 15th C we would at least have known where we were.

Inside it looked very different. There were no seats in the candle-lit nave which was strewn with straw and rushes and must have been freezing cold in winter. The congregation took little active part in the service, most of which was in Latin. There was no hymn singing.

Nonetheless, it was a place of awe and mystery to our medieval predecessors. It was the only stone-built building in the parish and by far the most impressive. The walls were painted with biblical scenes in bright colours which we know are stil there under the whitewash because patches of colour were revealed in practically every part of the church when the walls were steam cleaned in 1952. Unfortunately it was too expensive to expose anything beyond the three 13th C consecration crosses and two small texts and painting near the present pulpit.

It had a very catholic appearance with painted statues and woodwork, stained glass and large brass candelabra. The whole nave was dominated by the great rood screen and loft surmounted by the figures of the crucified Christ, Mary and St. John hanging in front of the painting of the Doom which fitted neatly into the pointed arch of the chancel.

It was not until the 15th C that the growing popularity of sermons and readings demanded a pulpit, a lectern and seating for the congregation.

© Miles Green, December 2000.

Church towers and bells were introduced in the Saxon period and were used not only to call the congregation to church, but for many other purposes as well; for warnings of attack or invasion, to call men to work, as a curfew, to celebrate anniversaries such as the monarch’s birthday, to rejoice at victories, to announce a death.

The earliest bells would have been hung simply, with the open end downwards. Real ringing, as we know it today, depends on the swinging of a bell starting from upside down above the frame so it performs a whole revolution at each blow This more complicated method was probably introduced by the 15th C and quite possibly earlier.

Penn’s church tower was built in about 1325, (not 1407 which was only a date found scratched on a tile somewhere in the tower). We know, from an inventory taken in 1552, by Edward VI’s Protestant commissioners, that the late medieval, Catholic, Penn church had 4 bells as well as the sanctus bell.

The sanctus which was rung at the most solemn moment of the Mass as the priest elevated the Host high above his head. This was to warn worshippers absorbed in their own prayers to look up in order to receive the blessings that were believed to flow from seeing the Host.

We can still see the deep grooves in the wall of the tower just above the west door made by the sanctus bell rope which for several centuries must have been rung by a man standing the other side of the door just inside the nave, in order to be able to see and time the precise moment of the elevation of the Host. This all came to an abrupt end, in 1547, with Edward VI’s Injunction that forbade the ringing of bells during Sunday services except for one ‘to be rung or knolled before the sermon’.

By 1637, Penn church was in a very poor state of repair. A visitation ordered by the Bishop of Lincoln reported that one of the bells had gone and ‘The butterices & corners of the steeple in decay & wants pgeting’ (pargeting or plastering).

In 1702, John Bennet, a new and active Vicar arrived and the medieval bells were all replaced by five new bells, three of which survive today.

The Rev. John Bennet (1663-1716), – The Church Bells

© Miles Green, July 2001.

We have, to my great delight and surprise, a drawing of the church, which pre-dates the major alterations by Sir Nathaniel Curzon, in the 1730s, that gave us the shape of the church we know today. Various clues suggest that the original drawing was made in the 17th C and is an accurate record of the church’s appearance at the time.

There is no written record or architectural evidence of any major work on the church in the 16th and 17th C, indeed there is specific evidence of the serious neglect which was entirely typical of many Anglican churches in the 150 years of religious turmoil following the Reformation.

We can therefore reasonably assume that this 17th C drawing also represents the shape of the Catholic church, in the late Middle Ages before the Reformation.

the chancel, the upper part largely rebuilt in the 1730s, about 8 feet shorter. The walls were covered with render to protect the soft clunch from weathering, and this was not removed until the 1950s. The East window was narrower than today, with diagonal leading and, almost certainly, clear glass had replaced earlier medieval stained glass. The ridge of the north porch was a foot lower than now, the buttresses much thinner and the door frame had different shaped moulding.

The drawing shows a tiled roof in what seems to be bad condition. We know, from a written record that the roof was tiled in 1552 at a time when most ordinary buildings were still thatched. Many churches in the later Middle Ages had flatter, lead roofs and earlier still they may have been thatched , but probably not in Penn where the manufacture of roof tiles was big business in the 14th C and where roof tiles were incorporated in the building of the nave walls and buttresses.

© Miles Green, October 2001.

When the distemper on the walls was steam cleaned by Frank Perfect & Son, in 1951/2, considerable evidence of wall painting was found all over the nave, but cost limited the further investigation of many of them. Near the pulpit, several superimposed series of post-Reformation texts came to light, including parts of the Lord’s prayer thought to date from about 1700 (probably 1709, when according to the Parish Register, ‘the Sentences in the Church were writt, & new Painted’). Opposite the north door there was a panel with traces of pigment, thought to be 15th C.

The most exciting discovery was the three consecration crosses that Clive Rouse, then Editor of the Records of Buckinghamshire, dated to the 13th C, based on the pigment used and the method of scribing. They must have been considered important in earlier restorations because they had survived as little sunken islands in the midst of later plastering. They are set out by compass, about 16 inches in diameter, and are all unusually elaborate and of different design. The crosses, which are alternately red on pink or cream, or vice versa, are contained within three bands or circles using yellow, light red or vermilion and some black or grey for the decoration.

Nave, South wall

Nave West wall, South

Nave West wall, North

There may well be more crosses undiscovered under the plaster, because when a church was dedicated or re-dedicated after major alterations, it was the medieval custom to paint or carve 12 crosses both inside and outside the church. The Bishop, with his entourage, first processed three times around the outside anointing the crosses with holy oil. He then struck the threshold of the main entrance with his crozier three times, at which the deacon flung open the door and the Bishop entered.

A cross of ashes and sand was sprinkled on the floor and the alphabet in Greek and Latin was traced in it. (Anyone know why? Was it ‘I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end?). The Bishop then consecrated the altar with hallowed water and wine and anointed all the crosses on the walls with holy oil. After which, the bells were rung and the parishioners admitted for Mass at the High Altar. Thereafter, the crosses were treated with great reverence and lights were burned before each one on the anniversary of the anointing.

Consecration was an important rite and was the necessary conclusion to a major re-ordering anywhere in the church. Important items of equipment, such as the vestments or vessels used in the Mass would be sent individually to the Bishop for a blessing – at a cost.

© Miles Green, December 2001.

The font in the South Aisle, ca.1890

The earliest specific record of the font is a pencil drawing of 1819, which notes that the bowl is lead. However, there is no doubt that we have a medieval font, for reasons that I will go into in a later article, but let us first consider its appearance.

It is not a solid lead font as many suppose, but it is an early medieval stone font covered with 16th or 17th C lead.. The font is covered with three separate pieces of lead sheet joined by seams ~ one flat on the bottom inside with the drain pipe in the centre; another around the inside walls turning over on the top rim; and a third around the outside, hammered into the chamfered shape of the underside. Many porous stone fonts had inside linings of lead on the bottom and sides, but to cover the outside with lead as well seems to be almost unique.

I am told, by Mr W.N. Paul, who wrote a very informative article on English fonts in the journal, The Local Historian (Vol 23, No3, Aug 1993), that he has only come across one other example of a stone bowl encased in lead and that is the 12th C font at Ashover in Derbyshire. (Does anybody know it?). Like ours, it has a small 2 ft diameter bowl, but, unlike ours, the lead is decorated with the figures of the twelve Apostles. We therefore need to look for an explanation for our unusual font. There seem to be two possible reasons – to conceal either decoration or damage.

Fonts were at considerable risk from Puritan zealots at the Reformation, who saw them as symbols of Popish superstition and preferred a simple basin. They believed that ‘a child could just as well be christened in a tubb of water at home or in a ditch by the way, as in a founte stone in the church‘. So many fonts were being damaged or removed that, in 1561, Queen Elizabeth issued a Royal Order requiring that ‘the Font be not removed from the accustomed place: And that in parish churches the curates take not upon them to confer Baptism in basins but in the Font customably used.’

Many parishes defied this royal order and the simpler and plainer a font, the more likely it was to survive. Penn’s font is far plainer than most anyway, but it just may    have decorative carving around the outside which needed to be concealed. Elsewhere, such carving was sometimes plastered over for the same reason. There is a mildly encouraging hollow ring when the lead is tapped.

Still more damage was done to fonts by Puritan zealots in the Civil War and Commonwealth, from the 1640’s to 1660, but the date of 1626, scratched into the lead by a bored parishioner, tells us that our font was already covered in lead by then.

Alternatively, and perhaps more probably, the lead might conceal damage done to the font. There is some denting in two places around the underside of the bowl; the Purbeck marble stem and base have been cemented together at some stage; and the circular stone platform has been badly damaged. We have no record of when all this damage happened, whether on one or several occasions.

It could have been the result of one of several moves to different positions in the church. The font must have first been placed in the nave and then moved to the south aisle when it was added on in the 14th C. The 1899 photograph shows it in the south aisle and you can see that the stone platform had already been damaged. It could have been further damaged in the most recent move from the south door to the west door in the 1950s. However, the overall damage is also consistent with a violent attack on the font during the Reformation perhaps followed a century later by a further damage during the Civil War and Commonwealth.

© Miles Green, February 2002

The earliest surviving sketch of the font was made in pencil, in 1819, and is in the British Museum. It was noted that it was made of lead. There was no font cover shown. The present octagonal, oak lid is Victorian, its shape laid down by the leaders of the Gothic Revival as representing the seven Sacraments and crucifixion.

All the principal authorities agree that the Purbeck marble stem and base, immediately below the bowl, are 12th C. They also agree that the circular platform on which it stands is formed of a ring of clunch (hard chalk) with a filling of red brick and cement that looks like it was once the base of a Norman, 12th C, pillar. The Purbeck marble of the stem and base is likely to have come from one of three sources – the Isle of Purbeck in Dorset, Petworth in Surrey or Bethersden in Kent. Ready-made pieces were produced in these factories.

Purbeck is not a true marble, but a hard limestone chiefly composed of fossilised fresh water snails varying in colour from creamy white, grey, light brown, green and blue. It can take a high polish and can be darkened to a near black with varnish or oil. The beauty of the highly polished marble was preferred to richness of design, but if left in damp conditions, over the centuries it flakes and roughens, as ours has done, and this is why Purbeck marble went out of fashion in the 14th C.

The dating of the cup-shaped bowl itself presents problems. It is not a solid lead font, it is a stone font covered with lead. The stone is completely concealed, inside and out, under a layer of lead, which is generally dated to the16th or 17th C, presumably on the basis that graffiti scratched into the lead on the outside of the bowl, run from 1626 to 1776. RCHM assumed that the bowl itself was probably 16th or 17th C; Pevsner declared it to be a bowl of uncertain date; Clive Rouse thought that the lead was 16th or 17th C, possibly covering an original bowl; and NADFAS declared the bowl shape to be of the Transitional period, c.1200.

However, there is a visible clue to the age of the bowl that settles the question and which all these eminent authorities appear to have missed. A church law, dating from 1236, required medieval fonts to be kept lidded and locked to prevent the theft of the holy water, highly valued for cures and for witchcraft. The lids were required to be secured by a padlocked metal bar across the top. The metal bar usually passed through two large iron staples set opposite each other in the top rim of the font. This arrangement was probably in general use before 1236, but thereafter, throughout the Middle Ages, Bishops’ visitations included a check that it had been done.

This requirement ceased abruptly with the Reformation, after which belief in holy water was regarded as idolatrous. The staples were removed, often leaving either a stump or a hole, and their presence is firm evidence of a pre-Reformation font. We have exactly this evidence on our font. On one side of the rim there are two 5/16 inch diameter stumps standing just proud under the lead about 2 inches apart, and directly opposite there is one corresponding sunken hole of similar size. This confirms that we have a medieval bowl and the dimensions (2 ft 2 inches wide, 1 ft deep) and shape of the bowl are consistent with the late 12th C.

Since this matches all the historical evidence, in particular that of the Vicar in 1802, that he had seen the date 1177 on a foundation stone under the chancel, we can be confident that our font is as old as the church and that both are over 800 years old.

© Miles Green 10 March 2002