LADY MAXSE’S FONT
or A STONE BOWL FROM WISBOROUGH GREEN?
In August 1929, Sussex Notes and Queries published an article from Lady Maxse of Fittleworth, about a stone basin which she had recently purchased. She asked for suggestions as to its date or purpose.
The object had two bosses representing heads which were much obliterated, and curved “swags” which formed other bosses which connected with the heads. It had been suggested that these represented wings. The stone was not local and was not granite.
The history was that the object had lain for years neglected in a builder’s yard at Wisborough Green. The builder had bought it ‘a good many years’ earlier from the Misses Upfield of the village who informed him that it was the original font from the church, which had been removed at the time of the Reformation. As, however, Wisborough Green already possessed a 13th century font, a holy water stoup, and a piscina, this story was obviously inaccurate.
The size of the artifact was: width, 16ins; greatest width inclusive of bosses, 20ins; height 9ins. The article advised that Lady Maxse ‘will be glad to show it to any expert but it is not for sale.’
Photographs of the bowl had been seen by ‘several persons who are qualified to judge on these matters’ and the general opinion was that ‘the article is an unusually handsome specimen of a mediaeval mortar.’ Nevertheless, the journal invited further suggestions.
The next edition of Sussex Notes and Queries, published in November of that year, continued the story. Lady Maxse herself had written that there was clear evidence of a ‘waste hole’ although it was stopped up. Also, that the inside showed no trace of wear or polish such as a pestle would cause. However, there was a slight channel in the top of one of the bosses which may have been a groove for the pestle to lie in.
Mr HF Pitt wrote to offer his opinion that it was certainly a mortar of early date and was not a ‘far cry’ from a mortar in his possession. A second mortar that he owned had two primitive handles, the remaining sides being occupied by decorated bosses. Above one of them was a small channel ‘common in stone and marble mortars.’ A third mortar of his to which Mr Pitt referred in his letter enjoyed ‘a persistent tradition that it was the original font from Wigginton church.’
The editor added a note that a portion of a mortar made of Caen stone which had been referred to in another volume of the Sussex Archaeological Collections had the ‘familiar’ square boss at one quarter ‘and at the next a portion of a definite handle rising from the base and standing free from the side of the vessel.
The overwhelming conclusion, then, was that the artefact was indeed a mortar and not Wisborough Green’s font.
This is an edited version of an article that first appeared in the history society’s magazine The Wisborough Green Historian in November 2023
Andrew Strudwick