Bungay No. 1

Knott (2008) informs that the Holy Trinity church of Bungay has now "one of Suffolk's few 18th century fonts, not too dissimilar from the one across the road at St. Mary. There 's another at far off Bawdsey." [none of these fonts listed in this Index on account of their late date]. The 18th-century font is probably not original from this church, because, about 150 years earlier Suckling (1846-1848) had written: "This church possesses no font, its use being supplied by a wooden moveable stool; though there is little cause, perhaps, to lament its disappearance, disreputable as is its successor. It could not have been very elegant, for we learn, from the authority above quoted [the 'Churchreeve's Books'], that in 1558 the Churchwardens 'paid the mason and his lad for 3 days work making the font, wages and meat, 3s. 9d.'" Suckling (ibid.) furher notes: "The circular tower of this church is, probably, as ancient as the reign of Edward the Confessor" [i.e., 1042-1066], and that the first recorded vicar of Holy Trinity is Robert Haustede, in 1308.