Potterne, Chirton and Upavon

Not only is the hunt for more Norman sculpture becoming increasingly interesting in terms of what we find, it is also a great way of seeing different parts of the countryside. I feel I have covered a lot of Wiltshire now and it is such a pretty county. We have seen so many quaint English villages, you begin to think that everyone lives in beautiful old cottages.

On a trip out to the Devizes area we first stopped off in Potterne, to have a look at the font there which is large and plain but unusual in that it has writing around its rim.

Then it was on to Chirton, which has a double whammy with a door adorned with beakheads (aka beaky creatures) and also a fantastic font, containing twelve carved figures - you've guessed it, the twelve apostles. The beakheads were, I hesitate to say "the usual" because clearly I'm becoming too used to seeing such fun and fine carvings - they were recognisably the same sort of style as many others we had seen, fairly chunky and with the same wide variation between faces - some with horns, some with beaks, some with teeth, some with long ears - even a hand. One looked like a dog with floppy ears, or a pig which was rather unusual.

The font was interesting because each figure was different and I expect if you had known what to look for, you could perhaps identify some of them from what they were holding. The only one we knew was Peter, who is always shown carrying keys. My sister had read that he has 2 keys in many pictures. I guessed this would be one to the front gate of Heaven and one to the back? We also both liked the elaborate foliage/organic design around the top and bottom of the font bowl. The figure I drew had rather appealing rolled hair and nicely observed folds in his gown.

Travelling onwards on the edge of Salisbury Plain, via the super quaint Urchfont, we arrived at Upavon. Here there was a most unusual font with eight sides, two of which had creatures, one had figures and five had foliage designs. The draw of this one had been the promise of two leopard like creatures - and we were not disappointed. Two panels show what we decided were more likely to be lions, and they were carved in lovely detail with a long curling tail, furry legs, and possibly a mane. They also had long claws. I was intrigued to later learn that Upavon was the setting for a big cat sighting; could the two somehow be related?

By the way, do take care if you go to Upavon as there were a gaggle of most entertaining but bolshy geese on the bridge. They even had their own sign to warn drivers - we saw them in action, coming on to the path and chasing off anyone who wished to go past, especially dogs and they were apt to cross the main road at any time, holding up traffic.