Zodiac Lead Font, St Augustines Church, Brookland

Paradoxplace BRITISH ABBEYS AND CATHEDRALS

A Lead Font from the 1100s with Zodiac Signs and Labours of the Month

in Saint Augustine's Church, Brookland, in the Romney Marshes

Links to other examples of Zodiac Signs and Labours of the Month in Britain, France and Italy

BACK TO SOUTHERN AND SOUTH WEST ENGLAND

Most people who have ever driven around the Romney Marshes will remember going past a farmy looking church with a strange detached tapered octagonal bell tower. The present church of Saint Augustine at Brookland dates from about 1250, with much of what is there today (including the all wooden tower) dating from this time (with the later addition of boxed in pews with doors - to be found in other Romney Marsh churches as well).

No-one knows the provenance of the 1100s lead font shown below, or how it arrived at the church, but it is now pretty much one of a kind in Britain.

The Romney Marshes (often including the churches) were a centre of excellence for smuggling for centuries, romanticized in the thrice filmed novel "Dr Syn" (written in 1915 about a fictional 1700s ex-pirate smuggler vicar of Dymchurch, who went around disguised in a grotesque scarecrow mask). After Napoleon was finally despatched in 1815, the British Government started taking revenue avoidance seriously and set up the Coast Blockade. On February 11 1812 the Coast Blockaders engaged a large armed smuggling party of around 60 people in a running battle that became known as the Battle of (the otherwise unknown) Brookland.

This beautiful lead font is said to be the best of the 30 or so lead fonts still to be found in British churches. The top band of reliefs show the signs of the Zodiac, whilst the arcades underneath contain representations of a typical activity for each month.

Eight of the Zodiac signs are repeated, giving two bands of 20 images each. Presumably the figures came from some sort of standard template or stamp, because the images for the repeated months (Aries to Scorpio) look to be exact copies. Maybe there was a small medieval factory stamping these out by the dozen, with the number of repeats depending on each font size (so maybe they were even bought by the yard)! Young Sherlock only worked all this out long after the photos were taken, so there is no knowing which cycle the images come from (nor does it matter).

Sagittarius	Capricorn	Aquarius	Pisces	Aries
The Archer	The Sea Goat	The Water Carrier	The Fish	The Ram
November 23 – December 21	December 22 - January 20	January 21 – February 18	February 19 – March 20	March 21– April 20
Knocking down acorns for swine-feed	Killing a pig (aka braining a swine with the flat side of an axe)	Two faced Janus (old and new years) feasting	Foot warming in front of a fire	Pruning

Pisces	Aries	Taurus	Gemini	Cancer
The Fish	The Ram	The Bull	The Twins	The (quaint) Crab
February 19 – March 20	March 21– April 20	April 21 – May 21	May 22 - June 21	June 22– July 22
Foot warming in front of a fire	Pruning	(Venus) Goddess of Fertility	Hawking	Scything

Gemini	Cancer	Leo	Virgo	Libra
The Twins	The (quaint) Crab	The Lion	The Virgin	The Scales
May 22 - June 21	June 22– July 22	July 23 – August 23	August 24 – September 22	September 23 – October 23
Hawking	Scything	Haymaking	Cutting corn with a sickle	Threshing (and stripped to the waist)

Virgo	Libra	Scorpio	Sagittarius
The Virgin	The Scales	The (froggy) Scorpion	The Archer
August 24 – September 22	September 23 – October 23	October 24 – November 22	November 23 – December 21
Cutting corn with a sickle	Threshing (and stripped to the waist)	Treading Grapes	Knocking down acorns for feed

This fragment of a wall painting of the murder of a kneeling Saint Thomas (Becket) was discovered in the mid 1960s. It was probably originally painted in the early 1200s (Becket was murdered on 29 December 1170).

Link to Limoges Becket Reliquary Boxes

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