Thornton Curtis is a village in the North Lincolnshire district of the county, 5 miles SE of Barton-upon-Humber. Some 2 miles E of the village centre are the ruins of Thornton Abbey, an Augustinian priory built by William le Gros in 1139 and raised to abbey status sin 1148. St Andrew's church is in the village centre on the E side of the Main street. It is a small church with W tower and nave with two side aisles of the Gothic period, a S porch and a late Romanesque chancel. Construction is of limestone, ironstone and chalk rubble and squared blocks with ashlar dressings, and was restored in 1884 by J. Fowler of Louth who also rebuilt the porch. The church contains a 12thc. Tournai “marble” font in the nave.

In 1066 Eadgifu had 10 carucates of land that was held by Ralph de Mortimer in 1086. Of this, Odo, Ralph's man held 2 carucates from him. This large manor was houme to 38 sokemen, 10 villans and 7 bordars on Ralphs demesne, and 13 sokemen and 1 villan on Odo's land. A smaller holding was in the hands of Grim in 1066. He held 2 bovates on land, that was held by Wulfric from Erneis de Bron in 1086.

The so-called Tournai marble is a dense carboniferous limestone quarried on the banks of the river Scheldt near Tournai and either exported as freestone for decorative carving (as at Lewes Priory (Sussex)) or worked nearby and the products, mostly fonts, exported. This vigorous industry extended from the 12thc. to the end of the 15thc. An English group of seven Tournai School fonts was established by Allen and Kitchen in 1894 articles. They were: St Mary Bourne, East Meon, St Michael’s Southampton and Winchester Cathedral (all Hants), Lincoln Cathedral and Thornton Curtis (both Lincs), and St Peter's Ipswich (Suffolk). Also in 1894, part of the bowl of an eighth font was discovered at Ipswich and is now in Ipswich Museum. Since that date, three other fonts have been attributed to the group: Boulge, Romsey Abbey (Hants) and Iffley (Oxon) - see Eden (1909) and Dunning (1944). More recent scholars, notably Drake (2002) and Anderson (1999) have cast doubt on these attributions. According to Drake, the Romsey Abbey font was said to have been destroyedc.1850 during a restoration, but there is no other evidence that it ever existed. The Iffley font is of black limestone but is uneven in shape, undecorated and unlike other fonts in the Tournai group. As for the Boulge font; Drake asserts that the finish of the bowl is too smooth for decoration to have been chiselled off it (as suggested by Eden), and points out that the bowl is too tall for its width, in comparison with genuine Tournai School products. Lions are a common motif on Tournai fonts, being found on 15 out eighty or so known examples throughout Europe (Drake, 53).