Whaddon nr. Milton Keynes / Waddon / Wadone / Whauddone

There is an entry for this Whaddon [variant spelling] in the Domesday survey [http://opendomesday.org/place/SP8034/whaddon/] [accessed 24 November 2015], but it mentions neither cleric nor church in it. A baptismal font in Whaddon is noted, with an engraving by J. Basire, in Gough (1792): the illustration shows the font with a strange-looking base of only two columns [NB: did Gough see only the drawing, but not the font?] -- the drawing gives the outer diameter of the basin as 2 feet 3 in., and the total height of the font as 3 feet 1 in. -- the name is spelled as "Waddon". Parker (1850) notes an Early English font here and refers to the engraving in 'Archaeologia' (vol. x, pl. 24). Sheahan (1862) dates it to the "Semi-Norman or Transition" period, between 1170 and 1210. Listed in Cox & Harvey (1907) as a baptismal font of the Early English period. The Victoria County History (Buckingham, vol. 3, 1925) notes: "Walter Giffard, first Earl of Buckingham, who died in 1102, granted the church of Whaddon to the priory of St. Faith at Longueville in Normandy [...] The building dates apparently from the early part of the 12th century, when it consisted of a chancel and nave. [...] The font, which stands beneath the western arch of the south arcade of the nave, is of 13th-century date, and has a tapering round bowl standing on a group of four columns, between which is dog-tooth ornament. Above the font, on the east soffit of the arch, is a wooden bracket, with a pulley, formerly used for raising the cover. It is probably of the 15th or 16th century, nad is rudely carved with the head of an animal." Pevsner (1960) notes: "Font. Of tub shape, on four shafts, separated by vertical bands of dog-tooth." The benefice page [www.hpiy.uk.com/stmarys/ChurchBuilding.htm] [accessed 19 December 2007] notes: "The stone font was carved in the 13th century, but the wooden cover with its beautiful carved dove is from the 20th century." [NB: the photograph in this latter source shows a polygonal lower platform on which the font stands, different from the square two-step plinth shown in the 1792 drawing; the drawing shows the legs as detached when they are in fact attached and with a dog-tooth pattern between them]