Font, Rath, Co. Clare
Co. Clare |
Religious Objects
Tucked into the southern doorway of Rath church in County Clare sits a baptismal font that has spent much of its life pretending to be something else.
Repurposed as a stoup, the small stone vessel that would once have held holy water for the blessing of those entering a church, it was wedged into the doorframe and put back to work long after its original function had passed. That kind of quiet recycling is common enough in Irish ecclesiastical sites, but what makes this object worth pausing over is how much of the original form survives, and what the remaining fragments reveal about what once stood here.
The font was originally free-standing, a type common in early and medieval Irish churches, consisting of a basin mounted on a central column with a separate stone base. The circular basin, measuring roughly 34 centimetres across and 23 centimetres deep, has chamfered edges, meaning the rim angles neatly inward rather than meeting the sides at a sharp right angle, and sloping interior walls that lead down to a drain-hole at the bottom. The outer body of the font is square, approximately 43 centimetres on each side, and tapers inward on all four faces toward where the column would have been. Directly beneath the font in the doorway sits a second stone, with a shallow circular hollow about 13 centimetres in diameter, which appears to be the surviving base section. One corner of the font has been cut away at some point and later replaced, suggesting the stone was altered to fit its new position or perhaps repaired after damage. Taken together, these two stones give a fairly clear picture of a once complete, if modest, liturgical furnishing now surviving in pieces and pressed into secondary use.