Baptism Font - St Mary - Beachamwell, Norfolk - Stone Church Artefacts on Waymarking.com

Victorian pillar font inside St Mary's church, Beachamwell.

"St Mary is the last surviving church of four that once served this area. It has everything a church needs to be beautiful. The round tower is one of the earliest in Norfolk, early 11th century; through the trapdoor in the ringing platform you can see right up to the top. This is augmented by a gorgeous early 15th century octagonal bell stage, resplendent with flushwork. The church beside this is tiny, but has a lovely thatched roof to nave and chancel, with a south aisle tucked behind.

Inside, everything is plain and simple, a typical English village church. There is old woodwork, a small amount of 19th century glass, a white-walled space full of light. The Victorians were kind here. But St Mary is not without a few fascinating details.

Firstly, in the north aisle chapel there is an extraordinary thing. It is an iron and bronze chest altar on six legs, and I have never seen anything quite like it. Pre-ecclesiological in style, it is dated 1835 in an inscription - Designed and Given by John Motteux... Made by Joseph Bramah and sons, London. My first thought was that this date was very close to that of the final Catholic Emancipation Act, and this altar might have been designed for a Catholic church - certainly, it would have been a very unusual Anglican church indeed that had an altar of this kind at that date, since the Oxford Movement was only just beginning to stir itself. Then it occured to me that the prominent inscription might be because the object was not intended for sale, but as an exhibition piece, and had only come to a church later. And then finally I remembered that the Motteux family were the Lords of the Manor, a local family. John Motteux restored St Mary in the 1830s, an extremely early restoration, one of the first in England. Another fruit of this restoration is the wholly secular pillar font, now at the west end of the south aisle. "

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