King's Sutton / Kings Sutton

A reference to the font and its relation to the legend of St. Rumbold appears in Love (1996). Sharp (2000) describes and illustrates a baptismal "Saxon font", recovered from the churchyard in 1923, which is claimed to be "associated with the baptism of the infant prodigy St Rumbold. Born at Sutton around 662, and reputedly a grandson of Penda of Mercia, the child declared himself a Christian, professed his belief in the Trinity and requested baptism and Holy Communion. This accomplished, he preached a sermon, quoted scripture, announced his imminent death and expired, aged three days." The claim to a Saxon origin of this font probably merits as much belief as the legend of wee Rumbold's precocious abilities itself. Described in Mee (1945): "The six-sided font is Norman, and appears to have been hewn from the stone by an axe." In Pevsner & Cherry (1973): "Rough, plain, Norman. The lead-lined bowl measures 2 ft 8 in. internally." The font is described and illustrated, with measurements, in The Corpus of Romanesque Sculpture in Britain and Ireland: "The font is 12thc., simple and unusually wide. [...] At W end of S aisle, a large octagonal cushion-capital shaped bowl with a plain shield on each face, but the SE angle has been chamfered off later so that there are now nine faces. Later crosses have been incised on the NE and NW shields. The bowl is lined with lead. It stands on a later rough-hewn cylindrical shaft, tapering inwards towards the foot, and this on a step, which looks like a millstone." The following is quoted from "A History and Appreciation of St Peter and St Paul’s Church Kings Sutton, reproduced by kind permission of Father Roger Bellamy" [in http://www.kateandjames.co.uk/churches/ [accessed 30 September 2007]: "The medieval font had been replaced in the 19th century. Then in the 1920s the present font was discovered in the churchyard. The then Vicar, Fr Maxwell Rennie, believed that they had found the font removed in the 19th century, and that it was the one associated with the baptism of St Rumbold in 662AD. He, therefore, wrote about the 'Saxon' font. Sir Nikolaus Pevsner dates it as Norman, and my own researches show that it is not the one here in medieval times. See attached copies [not found] of 19th century drawings.The present circular base is a mill-stone, said to be from Twyford Mill; Above this is a drum of lime-stone and then the irregular 7-sided bowl. It has crosses incised on it: in 1923? and is lined with lead. The internal diameter is 82cm. The base is 10cm deep, the drum 39cm and the bowl 35cm." There is a painting of this font in the J.L. Carr Collection of the Northamptonshire County Records Office [http://vads.ahds.ac.uk/x-large.php?pic=JLC_03_046&page=15&mode=boolean&words=carr&idSearch=boolean&vadscoll=The+J.L.+Carr+Collection] [accessed 27 March 2009]