Maker is a village on the Rame peninsula, at the far E of Cornwall's S coast, across the Tamar estuary from Plymouth. The parish occupies a large area of the peninsula, but there is no village of Maker: the settlements in the parish are at Kingsand to the S and Millbrook to the NW, and the church stands alone on high ground to the SW of Mount Edgcumb House and Park, an imposing 16thc. manor. The church is of c.1500, possibly incorporating the nave and chancel of an earlier church. The chancel E wall is of random red sandstone rubble and may be part of the earlier fabric; the rest of the building is of coursed red sandstone rubble. The church has N and S aisles, a S porch, an outer S aisle added as an Edgcumbe family chapel, and a W tower. There is a 12thc font, related to that at Bodmin, which was brought to Maker from St Merryn church.

In 1086, Reginald held Maker from Count Robert of Mortain. After the confiscation of the Cornish estates held by Robert's son Count William, Maker passed to the family of Valletort, where it remained until the 14thc. at least. The church was given to Plympton Priory in 1121.

The font is similar to that at Bodmin, by the same sculptors but much smaller. The so-called Bodmin group of fonts includes a core set of only four by that workshop; Bodmin itself, Roche, Maker and St Newlyn East. There are at least 14 other fonts of the suspended bowl type with obvious connections to the core set, but their decoration is more simplified or almost non-existent.

The font came from the church at St Merryn 50 miles to the NW on the N coast of Cornwall. A report of 1844 describes how 'the fine old granite font beautifully and emblematically sculptured, which lay so many years exposed in the churchyard of St Merryn, till removed to a place of security by the Rev. John Carlyon, the curate, has been presented to the church of Maker through the liberality of the worthy vicar of the parish, the Rev. Darell Stephens, who at considerable expense has cleaned and repaired it, and rendered it one of the finest fonts in the county. It originally stood in St Merryn church, whence it was displaced to make way for another particularly handsome and older font which has been recovered from the ruins of the Church of Constantine - a parish now and long since merged in St Merryn' (see Royal Cornwall Gazette 1844, a longer report containing rather less information was published in 1886).

The font that went to St Merryn is the 15thc. catacleuse stone font that is still there today, and the church it came from was overwhelmed by the sea, but survives in a ruinous state as St Constantine's Chapel and Holy Well.