Chalfont St Giles is a small town in S Buckinghamshire, 3 miles S of Amersham. Its position on the Metropolitan line makes it a popular residential town for the wealthier commuter, but it has retained a village character, especially in the High Street around the parish church. St Giles’s church is built of knapped flint, and consists of a chancel with a N vestry; a nave with a timber S porch, clerestories, and N and S aisles with 3-bay arcades; and a W tower. At the W end of the S nave arcade is a short and narrow extra bay. The nave arcades and chancel arch are 14thc work, while the chancel is of the 13thc, remodelled in the 14thc. The tower dates from the 14thc. and the vestry was built when the church was restored in 1861-63. The only 12thc feature is a Purbeck marble table font.

These Purbeck fonts were widely exported from Purbeck, especially to areas like this with no local freestone thought to be sufficiently durable for the purpose (but see the Aylesbury group of clunch fonts). They were usually decorated with arcading in low relief, which sometimes spalls away, and the shaving might have been undertaken to tidy it up. It is fair to assume that the coarse tooling acted as a key for a gesso ground for painting, later removed.