The _Real_ Reason We Were Visiting York

So the real reason we were visiting York was because Jo wanted to see the church where some of her Armistead ancestors had been baptized some 400 years ago, in the little parish church of All Saints in Kirk Deighton, Wetherby, about 15 miles west of York.

I could hardly deny her, especially given the number of times that she'd gone with me as I visited the places where some of my ancestors had lived and worshipped: Heiliggeistkirche and Peterskirche in Heidelberg, Germany; St. Martin's and St. Paul's Without the Walls in Canterbury, England; St. Peter's in Sandwich, England; and even King's Chapel in Boston, Massachusetts; not to mention the many cemeteries where various family members are buried.

So when she said she wanted to visit Kirk Deighton, the local church of the three Armistead brothers who emigrated to Virginia, and one of whom is her umpty-great-grandfather, of course I had to say yes!

Besides, it's an English parish church, so you know there's going to be some heraldry to see in it.

So early Sunday morning we took a taxi from our hotel in York to attend that day's service in the little church of All Saints in Kirk Deighton.

One of the first things you see upon entering the church is the baptismal font:

With its carved wooden cover:

You can see three shields on the body of the font, only one of which may be heraldic: on the left, we see the words “One Lord” with a cross formy in base; in the center, a shield with a Latin cross (it may be within some kind of border, but that is very hard to make out); and on the right, I cannot make out the two words, with a cross formy in base.

This baptismal font is not the one in use in the late 1500s/early 1600s when Jo's ancestors worshipped here. That would bethe much older baptismal font, plainer and broken at some point, which is now outside in the churchyard, but which was in all likelihood the one in which Jo Ann’s ancestors were baptized more than 400 years ago.

But while today we're only looking at what is very likely only quasi-heraldry on the "new" baptismal font, there was indeed, as I had both suspected and hoped, heraldry in All Saints Church. Not as much as I might have hoped, but probably more than I had any right to expect from such a small if long-lived parish church.

We'll see some more next time.