Salisbury Cathedral has just installed a new wishing well. That might not be what they think they have done, but in the slippery world of symbols and their interpretation, intention has very little to do with it.

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Salisbury Cathedral has just installed a new wishing well. … No, that’s unfair. Salisbury Cathedral has just installed, for the first time in 150 years, a permanent font. Designed by William Pye it takes the form of a giant bronze cruciform bowl, three metres across and filled with continuously moving water, pumped into the bowl from below and spilling out from the points of the cruciform. It is large enough for total immersion baptisms, and, when not in use, the water forms an optically still reflection of the cathedral’s roof and windows¹. In tiny letters, just below the lip, are words from Isaiah 13: “When you pass through the waters, I will be with you”. The Dean of Salisbury said in a newspaper interview what the point of the new font is:

This is a font, not a water feature… It’s not just something pleasing and aesthetic to have around. It’s an invitation to all our visitors, whether they’re Christians or not; a statement, as they come in through the door, of the Christian conviction of life after death. The font is a reminder that they have entered not just a historic building but a sacred space. They’re on holy ground.²

As a work of art, the “brimming baptismal bowl” is stunning, and the Dean and Chapter of Salisbury deserve credit for commissioning Pye (Britain’s foremost water sculptor) to produce it. As a piece of ecclesiastical equipment, I’m not sure how it will work. It will be interesting to talk to those who have to use it for baptisms. As a symbol of the Christian message, I think (although I am prepared to be proved wrong) that it is a lost cause.

The Cathedral prepared for the installation of the final font by placing a number of other Pye sculptures in the building, to measure public reactions. I saw one in Salisbury, a year or so ago, and the first thing that struck me was the number of coins in the bottom of the font. The symbol for the living waters of baptism had become a wishing well. There is something deep in the British psyche which can’t see a pool of water without wishing to throw money into it: ponds in garden centres, public bird baths, water features in shopping malls— all receive offerings to the gods of waters and pools.

Which all goes to show the truth of something asserted by Neil MacGregor, Director of the British Museum: “The meaning of symbols are determined not by those who deploy them but by those who receive them.”³ It doesn’t matter what the Dean and Chapter think the font is for. It doesn’t matter how it expresses in concrete terms (bronze, marble, wood, water) Christian beliefs about baptism (washing, death, refreshment, resurrection). It doesn’t matter that aesthetically it is a very beautiful thing. Even protected by the enormous edifice of Christian building and Christian theology, the font of Salisbury Cathedral has been, and will be, seen as just another wishing well.

There is the apocryphal story of the young woman in a jewellers, wanting to buy a crucifix: “you know, the kind with the little man on it”. I fear this new font will become its baptismal equivalent.

1. See the photographs on The Times website [↩]
2. Michael Wright, “Salisbury Cathedral: funky font makes a big splash.” The Telegraph Online, August 16, 2008. [↩]
3. Neil MacGregor, “Corporate Faith: Slippery Symbols” presented at the 2008 Scott Holland Lectures, King’s College, London, November 1, 2008. [↩]