This small, plain circular font stands on a simple pedestal at All Saints’ Church, Brixworth. Earlier antiquaries proposed a Roman date, owing to the church’s proximity to known Roman remains and the bowl’s unadorned form. Modern scholarship, however, has set aside this attribution: the proportions, tooling, and contextual evidence align more convincingly with a late Saxon origin.

The bowl measures approximately 22½ inches in diameter and 16 inches in height, its surface left undecorated save for the shallow wear expected of long liturgical use. The simplicity accords with other pre-Conquest fonts in the region, which favour robust geometry over figurative carving. Set within one of the most significant surviving early medieval churches in England, the font contributes to the broader evidence of sustained ecclesiastical use at Brixworth from the early Middle Ages onward.

Although lacking ornamental detail, the font’s plainness is characteristic rather than exceptional for the period, and it illustrates well the utilitarian, enduring forms adopted for baptismal vessels in Saxon parish contexts.1

• 1. British History Online