Cranfield / Cranfelde / Cranfelle [Domesday] / Crangfeld

There is an entry for Cranfield [variant spelling] in the Domesday survey [http://opendomesday.org/place/SP9542/cranfield/] [accessed 17 September 2015], but it mentions neither cleric nor church in it. The Victoria County History (Bedford, vol. 3, 1912) notes: "The advowson of the church belonged to the Abbots of Ramsey [...] The earliest mention of the church is in the time of Abbot Walter (1133–60), when he granted it to Godfrey the priest, (fn. 57) who paid 20s. yearly to the abbey for the repair of the service books at Ramsey. The next mention of the church is in 1178, (fn. 58) when Pope Alexander III confirmed it to the abbey, Pope Gregory IX doing the same in 1229. [...] The chancel arch, nave arcades and lower part of the tower date from about the middle of the 13th century [...] The font and pulpit are both modern, but in the churchyard is a 15th-century font in a ruinous condition." Listed in Cox & Harvey (1907) as a baptismal font of the Perpendicular period. Pevsner (1968) comments on the dating: "Font. Early C14, a chamfered square with eight shafts, but the panels carved in the C15 with blank Perp windows." [NB: the font in use at present appears to be a donation of 1892 and matches the Victorian style of font design; we do not have any information on the whereabouts of the late-Medieval font, nor any information on the font of the original 12th-century church].