Font, Churchclara, Co. Kilkenny
Co. Kilkenny |
Religious Objects
In the south-west corner of a medieval graveyard in County Kilkenny, a single block of polished limestone sits close to the boundary wall, easy to overlook and difficult to identify without knowing what you are looking for.
It is the surviving shaft of a baptismal font, the part that would once have supported a basin used for christenings, now separated from whatever bowl it once held and left to weather quietly among the graves of the medieval church of Clara.
The piece is not large, measuring roughly 35 centimetres in height and 40 centimetres across, with a broadly circular footprint. What distinguishes it from a random architectural fragment are the semi-circular roll mouldings carved at each of its four corners, a decorative technique common in Romanesque and later medieval stonework, in which rounded ridges are used to articulate edges and surfaces. Some of those mouldings have been damaged over time, but enough remains to make the craftsmanship legible. Running through the centre of the shaft is a drainage hole, about 11 centimetres in diameter, which would have allowed water to pass downward through the font, a standard feature of ecclesiastical fonts designed for the controlled use of blessed water during baptism. The limestone itself has been polished, suggesting the piece was worked with some care, and that it belonged to a church furnishing of reasonable quality rather than a purely functional object.