The #Norman Font#, which Milner called _crux antiquariorum_, is situated on the north side of the nave between the fifth and sixth pillars from the west front. It is one of a group of seven found in England; of which four are in Hampshire, at East Meon, S. Michael's (Southampton), S. Mary Bourne, and Winchester; two in Lincolnshire, in the cathedral and at Thornton Curtis; and one at S. Peter's, Ipswich. Of four similar fonts on the Continent, that at Zedelghem, near Bruges, is most like the Winchester example, and also illustrates the same legend. The material of which these fonts are made is a bluish-black calcareous marble, such as is still worked at Tournai in Hainault. The font before us is a nearly square block of marble supported on a solid central column ornamented with horizontal mouldings, with four disengaged pillars of lesser diameter, with "cable" mouldings, at each corner. The spandrels of the top are decorated with carved symbolic subjects, leaves and flowers on two sides, and on the other two doves drinking from vases out of which issue crosses, typifying baptism, it is said. It is rather curious that the artist has disregarded the usual symmetry, and filled his spaces without reference to the corresponding ones. On the north and east faces of the font are three circular medallions with symbolic doves and salamanders. On the south and west are scenes from the life of S. Nicholas of Myra, as was fully demonstrated by Milner; the north side showing the saint dowering the three daughters of a poor nobleman, while on the west he restores to life a drowned person, probably the king's son in one of the stories of his life, and rescues from death by the axe three young men who are about to be slain either by the executioner or by a wicked innkeeper, for there are two versions. Some authorities would find four scenes represented on the west side; but on what grounds it is difficult to see. There only appear to be two figures of the saint, and the two scenes are divided by what looks like a short vertical bar indicating a difference of subject (see p. 117). The cult of S. Nicholas of Myra grew rapidly in the twelfth century, being popularised by the crusaders. In this century it is known that the carved work at Tournai, whence it is probable that the black marble came, was remarkable for its symbolism. The font has been thought to be older, on account of its archaic figures, but, as the Dean of Winchester pointed out in a paper read before the Archaeological Association in 1893 (to which we are indebted for much of this account), the mitre which S. Nicholas is represented as wearing was not recognised as part of a bishop's official dress until the very end of the eleventh century; in fact, the particular form of mitre depicted appears to have been late twelfth century. The conclusion naturally arrived at is that the font is of Belgian origin, carved at Tournai between 1150-1200, and its presence