Font, Crosserdree, Co. Westmeath
Co. Westmeath |
Religious Objects
Half a baptismal font lies embedded in the soil at the centre of a ruined church in County Westmeath, its limestone rim barely clearing the ground.
It is not displayed, not labelled, and not especially easy to spot. It simply sits there, a fragment of a once-functional liturgical object slowly disappearing into the earth, inside walls that are themselves disappearing into ivy.
The font is what survives of a circular limestone vessel with slightly tapering sides, originally around 0.66 metres in external diameter and 0.38 metres tall. A baptismal font of this form would have held the water used for christenings, with a central drain hole in the basin allowing the water to be disposed of reverently after use. Only half of the vessel now remains, broken at some point in its history and partially swallowed by the ground. The church it once served stands in the same condition, its walls poorly preserved and thick with ivy, occupying the centre of Crosserdree graveyard. The fragment sits roughly 2.2 metres north of the south wall and 5 metres east of the west wall, which places it near the middle of what would have been the nave or chancel floor. No date is recorded for either the church or the font, though the description of it as medieval suggests it belongs to the long period between the Norman arrival in Ireland and the Reformation, when such limestone fonts were commonplace furnishings in parish churches across the island.
The graveyard at Crosserdree remains in use, which means the site is generally accessible, and the church ruin and its half-buried font are visible to anyone who takes the time to look carefully at the ground within the roofless walls. The fragment is easy to miss if you are not expecting it.