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St Thomas of Canterbury, Lovington, Somerset

Location
(51°4′30″N, 2°34′35″W)
Lovington
ST 597 308
pre-1974 traditional (England and Wales) Somerset
now Somerset
medieval Wells
now Bath & Wells
  • Robin Downes
  • Robin Downes
9 June 2008

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Feature Sets
Description

The tiny hamlet of Lovington (Lufa’s tun) lies 1km S of the Somerset river Brue and only about 500m N of the Cary, on the SW edge of a terrace deposit of gravel on top of the locally predominant Lower Lias rock, with extensive tracts of such terrace deposit to the NE. The church is about 0.5 mi S of the secondary B3153 road linking Castle Cary to Somerton. The church has 13thc origins. The tower, nave and porch were all rebuilt from 1861-3. There is a font of unknown date, most probably post-c.1200, but which is included here for reference.

History

Prior to 1066 Lovington was held by three thegns; in 1086 it was held by Serlo de Burci. The existence of the church is documented in 1241 and again in 1291 (see VCH).

Features

Furnishings

Fonts

Comments/Opinions

In the opinion of the fieldworker, it is probably unlikely, but in their opinion the font bowl may be earlier than the 13thc. However, there does not appear to be a clear change of masonry or technique, apart from possibly between the stem and the plinth. The official listing text on the other hand states that the font is of the 19thc, which seems dubious as the rosettes are all hand-carved rather than machined, and moreover the bowl has been repaired, suggesting it is old enough to have had a lock fitted and is therefore probably pre-Reformation. The hollow-chamfered octagonal stem suggests a more likely date in the 13th-14thc which would be consonant with the smooth finish of the stone. The lack of tooling marks mitigates against an 11th-12thc date. Nevertheless, the rosettes may hark back to an earlier stylistic legacy and given that the date is contested, it is included here for reference.

Bibliography

Historic England listing 1056528

  1. N. Pevsner, The Buildings of England: South and West Somerset (Harmondsworth, 1958), 222.

Somerset County Council, Historic Environment Record 52325. Online at http://webapp1.somerset.gov.uk/her/text.asp

'Lovington', in VCH Somerset: Volume 10, ed. Mary Siraut (Woodbridge, 2010), pp. 177-188. British History Online http://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/som/vol10/pp177-188 [accessed 19 June 2023].