So the support by the Churches Conservation Trust for the proposals of the Taylor Review (s.p.b.) is very encouraging. It heralds a debate on the future of these 16000+ historic buildings from a secular perspective without in any way diminishing their ongoing religious function. Let’s hope the debate can remain measured and sensible.
Recently asked by the Barrow on Humber branch of the W.E.A. to guide a visit to Thornton Curtis church in North Lincolnshire, the visit to take place on the 15th July starting at 2-30pm. Anyone welcome.
Apart from other features and fittings Thornton Curtis church is well known for having one of the few surviving fonts made of Tournai marble (see above). These fonts share the characteristics of being squat, black in colour and, usually, having detailed carving in shallow relief.
Tournai ‘marble’ is in fact a type of very hard (compacted) limestone quarried in an area of Belgium around the town of Tournai. Dark in colour it can ‘take a polish’ which means the surface can become shiny following careful smoothing of its surface, it thus presents a very singular feature. It seems certain that such fonts were carved from single blocks of stone, the work being done on site and then the finished product being exported. As such it must have been a very expensive, high status object. Fonts were a moveable (with difficulty, fitting. There are many church fonts today which have ‘journeyed’ in their history, the evidence not always being available from surviving sources. So was Thornton font always in its present home, maybe, maybe not but it may well be important in this context to be aware of the fact that Thonrton Curtis church was under the control of Thornton Abbey before the dissolution of colleges of secular canons in the reign of Edward VI. This monastic establishment was, in its day, very wealthy.