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Lufton Church is unashamedly Victorian,designed by Benjamin Ferry in 1863. It replaced a building mainly of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, but with still far older work in it. The Norman font, the great treasure of the church, is of a date no later than the eleventh century.
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| The Saxon or Norman Font. |
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It testifies to the long witness of Christian worship on this site, as it may even be Saxon in origin, carved out of a single block of Ham stone, and is a plain tub shape, with a simple rope moulding as decoration, its detail still as clear and precise after a thousand years as when it was first carved.
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The church seems always to have been a simple building consisting of an un-aisled nave and chancel. This picture shows the church
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before it was re-built, and we may regret the loss of the delightful traditional square-headed windows of early perpendicular design.
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Benjamin Ferry, after being influenced by the Camden Society at Cambridge, became diocesan architect to Bath and Wells Diocese, and had considerable influence in the building and re-building of many churches in the area. He cannot be said to have been an inspired architect of genius like other great names of the Victorian period, such as Scott, Pearson, or Butterfield, but he is a greatly respected figure in the profession.
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| Benjamin Ferry's new church of 1863. |
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His churches always have a care and sensitivity to their location, which lifts them above the rut of many others. He designed Holy Trinity Church in Yeovil in 1846, (one of the all-too-few pieces of distinguished architecture left after the disaster of the sixties demolition of the town centre,) and his refined handling of site and mass is evident again twenty years later when he came to set Lufton Church alongside its little village green.
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Visitors exploring the lanes around Yeovil, who chance on Lufton, never fail to be charmed by the setting of the church and its air of neat and loving serenity. The building may not appear to promise much, but there are delightful surprises and details to be found. The bell turret is supported by an exuberant bunch of lilies and angel
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heads, and the low porch, with its corbel heads and two benches, (the original furnishings of the church when re-opened,) invite the traveller to sit and rest. Inside the door, the font proclaims the foundation of our faith, baptism in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.
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