The Wixey Jug

The jug used for filling the font at St James’s Church has been in use as a baptismal jug in Chipping Campden for almost exactly 100 years. It is Arts and Crafts era, made in copper, 43cms high, inscribed with the words ‘The Gift of Herbert Wixey, 1920’ and chased in Celtic script with a quotation from Matthew 19 v.14 ‘Suffer little children, and forbid them not to come unto me: for of such is the kingdom of heaven’.

It is a copy of a royal medieval English ewer made in the 14th century bearing the royal coat of arms, which somehow found its way to West Africa, to be acquired for the British Museum in 1896. This would tie in with Ashbee’s Guild of Handicraft metal workers seeing it as a model, either before or after their move to Campden.

Herbert Wixey owned and ran Wixey’s Stores on the corner of Church Street which was established in 1863. A newspaper advertisement described Herbert Wixey as a ‘high class family grocer, an export tea blender and a provision merchant’.

He was a pillar of the local business society, a Sunday School teacher and involved in most of the local committees and activities. He often appeared in Evesham Journal newspaper reports.

At the 1883 meeting, in responding to the toast “The Town and Trade of Campden”, which was new to the Society’s list of toasts, grocer-baker-bank manager Herbert Wixey said Campden was well represented in every class of business, and his experience proved that he could get work done there much cheaper than in large towns. He urged the tradesmen of the place to exert themselves to keep the trade in their own hands and said that he never spent a shilling elsewhere that he could spend in CampdenThe story of the Ashanti jug in the British Museum, on which this is based, is fascinating in itself. It is described as follows: Jug; copper alloy; on the front of the spouted jug are the royal arms of England as used in the period 1340 to 1405, with a crown above and two lion supporters; on each side of the neck of the jug are three roundels with a falcon spreading its wings, the roundels nearest the spout with the falcon looking to the front, the others with the falcon looking to the back; around the belly of the jug are three lines of lettering within a moulded band; these are read from the bottom and form two mottoes: ‘+ HE THAT WYL NOT SPARE WHEN HE MAY HE SHALL NOT / SPEND WHEN HE WOULD DEME THE BEST IN EVERY / DOWT TIL THE TROWTHE BE TRYID OWTE’ (He that will not spare when he may he shall not spend when he would / Deem the best in every doubt until the truth be tried out)…

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