Font, Martry, Co. Meath

It travelled there from Martry, a small settlement a few kilometres to the south, where a church once stood and has long since disappeared from the landscape in any meaningful form. The fragment is all that survives of what was once a baptismal font, and its presence in Kells is the kind of quiet displacement that happens to ecclesiastical furnishings when the buildings they belonged to fall into ruin or simply cease to function.

What remains is the lower portion of the basin, roughly 39 centimetres in diameter, belonging to an octagonal font. Baptismal fonts of octagonal form were common in medieval church architecture; the eight-sided shape carried theological symbolism relating to resurrection and new life, the eighth day representing eternity beyond the seven days of creation. This example had ribs running along the angles where the flat panels met, and on the lower panel an angel's head with outspread wings was carved in relief. The fragment was documented by Helen Roe in her 1968 study of the area. The original church at Martry, dedicated like many early Irish foundations to a local or regional saint, is no longer standing in any substantial form, which makes this carved remnant one of the few tangible traces of its interior.