Font, Rathconnell, Co. Westmeath
Co. Westmeath |
Religious Objects
What remains of a medieval baptismal font at Rathconnell, County Westmeath, is easy to overlook precisely because the most recognisable part of it is gone.
The column that once supported the basin has long since disappeared, leaving only the octagonal base sitting at the western end of a ruined church. The base is chamfered, meaning its edges are cut at an angle rather than left square, a detail that speaks to careful craftsmanship even at this parish scale. It measures roughly 72 centimetres across at the bottom, narrowing towards the top, with a central hole just 12 centimetres in diameter where the column once slotted in. The whole thing sits in pasture now, within a graveyard at the centre of which the poorly preserved walls of Rathconnell Church still stand.
A font of this type would have been used for baptism, likely serving the local community throughout the medieval period. The octagonal shape was common in ecclesiastical stonework of that era, the eight sides carrying symbolic associations with resurrection and new life that made the form particularly appropriate for a baptismal object. The church itself is ruined and poorly preserved, but the surrounding landscape carries further traces of medieval activity. Approximately 75 metres to the northwest lies a castle site, and a little beyond that, at around 85 metres, a motte and bailey. A motte and bailey was a form of early Norman fortification consisting of a raised earthen mound, the motte, beside an enclosed courtyard, the bailey, and their presence here suggests Rathconnell was once a place of some strategic and ecclesiastical significance in the medieval midlands.