This is the large brown-pink marble bowl located close to the front door. Every church has a font where people are baptised or ‘christened’ as they begin their life of faith in God and join the church community. Our font was given in 1877 by the Sunday School children of Adelaide. Underneath its tall, Blackwood cover is the large marble bowl that you see. In that bowl there is a basin where the water is placed. Baptism or ‘christening’ by the pouring of water over a person is a symbolic washing where the person (infant or adult) is ritually washed clean as they begin their new life with God.

Our Font was designed by William Butterfield, who was the architect of this cathedral.

The bowl of the Font is octagonal. It is made of spangled pink Plymouth marble from the area around Devon in England.

The decorative panels and shields are made of white marble from the island of Iona or the island of Skye. The cross within the white shields is inlaid Plymouth black marble. The octagonal base of the Font is made of sandstone.

The location of the Font just inside the door is significant. Here people start their new life of faith, and once they have been baptised, they join the rest of the baptised people in the pews, together playing their part in the ongoing life of the congregation here at St Peter’s Cathedral. As people come into the cathedral, the Font reminds them that they were baptised, even though they probably can’t remember the event. It reminds them that they are in a special relationship with God and that relationship was symbolised and sealed at their baptism. They are a “child of God, and an inheritor of the kingdom of heaven” as the Baptism service says and have been received into the congregation of the Church. For the rest of their lives they are to live God’s life in their lives as faithful members of the Church.

Baptismal Fonts can be octagonal or circular or triangular in shape.