10/09/2024
A baptismal font dating back to the Middle Ages has been restored and repaired more than 80 years after it was destroyed by German bombers during the Second World War.
The font, installed in 1500 in the village church of Nettlestead St Mary in the Diocese of St Edmundsbury and Ipswich, was reassembled using grey cement after being blown apart in 1940 by German bombers ditching their load into the Suffolk countryside en route home from a raid.
The full restoration of the font took place this summer including removal of grey cement and repair of water damage from a leaking, now repaired, roof. It features 'extraordinary' carvings including St Catherine, holding her wheel.
The restored font will take ‘pride of place’ when a restoration and re-ordering project in the church is completed early next year.
Parochial Church Council member Maureen Gardiner, who heads fundraising for the church, said: “We are all so delighted by what he has achieved.
“It will still bear some of the scars of its history, but you can see the beauty of the carvings so much more clearly, and the whole font has such grace.”
The church received a £2,000 conservation grant from the Pilgrim Trust, distributed by Church of England conservation staff through its conservation programme, toward the repair.