Font, possibly medieval/early modern

3D Model

Medieval or Early Modern stone font in the north-west corner of the nave of St Thomas à Becket’s Church, Capel. Consisting of an octagonal bowl set upon a tapering cylindrical stem and a broad, chamfered base, all carved from a pale limestone. The bowl is plain and thick-walled, its octagonal exterior only lightly tooled, with a deep, leaded interior intended for full baptismal immersion of the hands or vessels. Small dowel-holes around the rim indicate the former presence of a hinged wooden font-cover, as required by later medieval and post-Reformation church practice. The stem, circular in form and subtly moulded at its junctions, rising from a foot with a broad plinth. The overall design, with its combination of plain octagonal bowl and round stem, is perhaps characteristic of 13th- to early 14th-century parish fonts in Kent, where functional simplicity often took precedence over sculptural elaboration.