Baptism Font - St Mary - Ottery St Mary, Devon
Posted by: SMacB
N 50° 45.168 W 003° 16.761
30U E 480293 N 5622372
A square 'Butterfield' baptism font in St Mary's church, Ottery St Mary.
Waymark Code: WM16EF6
Location: South West England, United Kingdom
Date Posted: 07/14/2022
Views: 0
A square 'Butterfield' baptism font in St Mary's church, Ottery St Mary. Designed in 1850 - all the marble is from Devon and Cornwall. The cover is in a Byzantine style.
Created by William Butterfield, a Gothic Revival architect and associated with the Oxford Movement (or Tractarian Movement), noted for his use of polychromy (
visit link) , the font style is meant to be Norman-like with its big square bowl on a large central shaft and one at each corner. The white marble is from the famous quarry of Carrara in Italy (
visit link) but the rest is from Devon and Cornwall, according to the Church Guide - not necessarily real marble in the geological sense: there is no marble in Great Britain, although there are plenty of carboniferous pseudo-marbles, of which Purbeck Marble with its visible prehistoric shells is the most famous (
visit link) .