In some cases, the date of the Font may be fairly conjectured, if not satisfactorily determined, in the absence of any particular characteristic of moldings. or device, by some constructive peculiarity in its position. Thus, the plinth of a pier may be elongated towards the west and exactly adapted to the size and shape of the Font which stands upon it. A careful examination of the masonry will often prove that in such cases both are coeval. Of course, such evidence is inconclusive: because the plinth may have been adapted to receive an earlier Font; but unless a marked difference of date is observable, the presumption is manifestly in Favour of the opinion that both were placed there together. Perhaps also the side of the Font next the pier is plain, while the others are enriched with sculpture. We have met with Fonts partly built into the pier of the belfry arch, as at Great Abingdon, and Little Shelford, Cambridgeshire; or closely adjoining it, and evidently placed there when the arch was built, as at Barton and Rampton in the same county. Frequently large plinths or masses of masonry are laid down at some depth in the floor of the church, forming as it were almost a part of the original foundations; and in these cases the Fonts which they bear will generally be found coeval with the church, since a Font of one style seems seldom to have been made to fit the steps or base of another; not, so far as we have observed, do ancient plinths appear to have been altered in form or size to fit later Fonts. It is of course impossible to say that these plinths e Stoke Golding. 31
