Jake’s Lead Font/Casket
Jake Bullimore chose this seal lead font or casket, pictured above, as his object. From the museums MODES record he was able to discover that it was found in Brough, which is about 5 miles north of Newark. The Romans knew it as the small town of Crococolana. The lead panel has four embossed panels. The top two panels are narrow and have a diagonal cross pattern, the bottom left has a diagonal pattern in the top corner, whilst the bottom right has two diagonal patterns and a circular pattern in the middle. Possibly used as a font for baptism’s following the introduction of Christianity or as a casket for storing clothing etc. A similar piece of lead was found in Thorpe which has the Chi Rho symbol (the first two letters of Christ’s name in Greek) and the inscription VTERE EELIX, which should read VTERE FELIX and translates as ‘use me happily’. This has led to a suggestion that it may have been a casket containing wedding presents. Jake chose this object because he had researched similar objects before. He thought it would be easy to research, but soon realised that it was not as easy as he thought it would be.
