Family Lessons 117: Walton Font

This month, I arranged to call at the Church of St Mary, at Walton on the Hill, the mother church of Liverpool. Much damaged in the Liverpool Blitz, the Victorian tower survived, but the older nave and chancel had all to be rebuilt. The ancient Norman font under that tower had the ring of eight bells come crashing upon it, damaging its carvings and destroying its base. Someone with inestimable skill and patience was tasked with piecing it together once Germany ceased to be a combatant.

The font was of particular interest to me. Dating to the late 1000s or 1100s, it was almost certainly the bowl in which my De Walton ancestors were baptised from the 1150s-1500s. The Roman Catholic Church of which they were part and to whose ministry they contributed, taught that baptism prevented a child from going straight to hell. Corrupted by original sin, only the Roman sacrament of sprinkling consecrated water could alter its destination. Interestingly, some of the priests of that church are recorded on a list of clergy found in the porch, such as Stephen (1174), William de Kirkgate (1240) and Ralph Stanley (1450), who would all have baptised my forbears.

Although damaged, the font depicts scenes from the early life of Jesus, including the annunciation, the journey to Bethlehem and others which are too worn or shattered. While the old priests pointed to the font, the font seems to point to Jesus. How often symbols and ceremonies clutter the path to salvation, distracting us from the Saviour Himself. Four hundred years’ worth of ancestors were sprinkled in this font, and I suspect that their respective parents thought the performance of baptism was itself a saving act. If you think yourself saved by some object or ritual, then better a bomb or bell fall upon it and obliterate it forever. It is Jesus alone who saves, and He saves all who come to Him in simple, child-like faith.

Above: the restored ceiling through which the bells fell

“Look to Me, and be saved,
All you ends of the earth!
For I am God, and there is no other.
I have sworn by Myself;
The word has gone out of My mouth in righteousness,
And shall not return... Isaiah 45: 22-23, NKJV