The allure of a mysterious Saxon font in Toller Fratrum’s tiny church has fascinated artists for a century, says CPRE’s Rupert Hardy
n 1934, the artist John Piper drove 112 miles through the night from Henley-on-Thames with some friends just to see an extraordinary font in the tiny church of St Basil’s at Toller Fratrum in West Dorset.
Toller Fratrum is no more than a small, atmospheric hamlet of mostly thatched cottages and a single impressive 16th-century farm house, Little Toller Farm. Located down a one-way track near Maiden Newton, it was built largely by John Samways, who acquired the estate in 1540. The hamlet is now a dead end – earlier lanes to neighbouring villages have dwindled into farm tracks. Mentioned in the Domesday Book of 1086, the parish is very old and was held by the Knights Hospitallers in the medieval era. The Hospitallers were founded in the 11th century, during the first Crusade, as a religious order to care for the sick or injured pilgrims at their hospital in Jerusalem.
The isolated farming community of Toller Fratrum has always been mostly cut off from the modern world except when the railway was built through the parish. But it never had a station and the line closed in 1975.
The name is taken from its location on the brook formerly known as the Toller, which in Celtic means ‘hollow stream in a deep valley’ but is now called the Hooke. The addition of Fratrum is Latin for “of the brothers” – the knights of the Order.
The Hospitallers dedicated the church to St Basil, an obscure 4th century cleric who became the patron saint of hospitals. No-one seems to know how old the church is, but it is possibly Saxon, given the rounded shape of the churchyard. It may have been much larger than the present tiny Grade II* listed structure that is there now. The current stone and slate building was rebuilt in the Victorian period, probably on the foundations of the Preceptory chapel in which the Hospitallers would have worshipped. The exterior may be unprepossessing but within lurks a rare treasure … a remarkably well-carved font dating back also to Saxon times.
John Piper was right. It is worth travelling many miles to see.
Beautifully carved font
The font may be a simple tub shape, probably of Purbeck stone, but it is the carving that is so special. There are figures in high relief showing Biblical characters and scenes. Many have their arms upstretched to the heavens, or in posture of prayer. Eyes peer out from the stone, with hands gripping the plaited rim above.
One interpretation is that the principal figure represents Christ, surrounded by his apostles. St Michael is there too, carrying a cross and leading souls from Hell. There is a four-legged creature standing on columns, sharing a human face with another creature and another figure that may represent the Holy Spirit and the Lamb of God. Another possible explanation is that the carvings may show Moses saving the Israelites at the battle with the Amelekites – a story in Exodus, from the Old Testament.
The carving, shrouded in mystery, is exceptional. It fascinated John Piper, whose photograph of the font is at the Tate Gallery in London. It was featured in the first Shell Guide to Dorset, produced in 1935 by Piper’s friend, war artist Paul Nash, whose work was moving into surrealism.
John photographed the font several times, often wetting the stone and lighting it with a paraffin lamp, to achieve a more dramatic effect.
Piper was an early enthusiast for Romanesque sculpture, seen by some as primitive and unbalanced, but by others as radiating a mystical strength. He believed that contemporary artists, including Picasso, drew inspiration from this early period of sculpture.
Piper wrote: “For the primitive artist the Deity … is above all awe-inspiring and majestic; powerful, and very unlike powerless man himself. So there is very little that is knowable, touchable or human about these associates of the primitive God on a village font.”
His visits to the South West were part of a rediscovery of the Romanesque which had been ignored by the lovers of English Gothic in the Victorian era.
Mary Magdalene
There is also a mysterious stone fragment in St Basil’s, above the altar, depicting Mary Magdalene washing the feet of Christ and drying them with her own hair. It is thought it may have been a part of the 11th century Chichester Reliefs found in the town’s cathedral.
The east wing of the farm may now appear as just another outbuilding, but was once the refectory for the Knights. There are some lovely carvings on the stringcourse (the decorative horizontal band on the exterior wall of a building), especially one of a boy playing the bagpipes. The farm has a surviving medieval carving of a poor man being given a loaf of bread, reflecting the hospitality which was one of the duties of the Knights.
I can recommend Toller Fratrum, Little Toller Books’ slim volume on the hamlet and the church. The latter may be closed for regular worship, but is still open for visitors.
churches in Dorset, including the one opposite my own house at Winterborne Tomson. St Andrew’s is one of only four English single-celled Norman churches with an apsidal east end. Its plan has not altered since its building in the early 12th century. They offer a priceless legacy of the beauties of our past. Do visit it and this corner of a historic and very unspoilt Dorset!
