Tockenham, Wiltshire

The design of Tockenham's Norman font was very similar to Christian Malford's. It's a very pleasing shape. I feel very fond of Norman fonts. I mean who would go out of their way to see a sterile soul-less 'Perpendicular' font? Perhaps I'm getting fantastically narrow minded. But I can't imagine wanting to make a special effort to see and draw a precisely cut or over fussy design. The Romanesque ones have personality and some kind of realness - it's because of their slight wonkiness, and it doesn't matter if they're just geometric designs (rather than the ones with jolly animals).

And here's something else that's interesting at Tockenham's church. A Roman villa was excavated north of the village (in fact it was on 'Time Team' at some point). And built into the church just left of the main door is what's thought to be a sculpture of one of the household gods of the villa. In some places you can read it's Aesculapius (including The Journal of the Association of Roman Archaeology ) but elsewhere people disagree. Aesculapius does have a snake twirling round a staff - and I could see something similar on the sculpture, so maybe the latter at least had similar characteristics, namely, of healing and medicine.

 

You can also see a round shape above the snake - the ARA bulletin suggests it's a patera (a bowl for libations). Maybe it is, it looks like a Thing although there's no detail. And the bulletin calls the long-handled ice cream cone on the right a 'cornucopia' - the horn of plenty. I'm not sure it's especially horn-shaped though - in the story it was literally a goat's horn. And I do also wonder about the length of hair of the figure - could it be a woman perhaps? I know, men do have long hair too.

You can see a photo of the Roman sculpture on the Wiltshire Council website.

My other post on Tockenham is here.

Images © Rhiannon 2014