St Michael’s, Orchard Park Road, North Hull, is a modern church - ‘the best post-war church in Hull’, Pevsner & Neave 1995, p. 513. It uses the old font from St Martin’s, Wharram Percy.

Refer to Bell, Beresford, et al., 1987. Further historical references relating to Wharram Percy are given in that site report.

The font is compared by Bell, Beresford with the one at Fridaythorpe, and they suggest a late 12th- to early 13th-century date. They also suggest that the pattern is carved on two bays only because the font stood in a corner (Bell, Beresford 1987, 129).

The tapered cylinder is unusual; perhaps this was done so that the officiant could stand comfortably facing it. Some fonts, for example at Barmston and perhaps Atwick, have an arcaded base, which could have had the same practical purpose.

The dimensions are within the limits of the cylindrical fonts of the earlier part of the twelfth century. While nailhead is a late indicator for twelfth-century work, it is odd that the pattern should be used contemporaneously with the very simply drawn and cut ‘arcade’. Was the nailhead a later improvement? But perhaps this is an extreme case of the general rule that patterns are better made than work requiring the skills of laying-out and drawing.