Sawston / Salstton / Salsttone

There are three entries for Sawston [variant spelling] in the Domesday survey [http://opendomesday.org/place/TL4849/sawston/] [accessed 24 May 2016], none of which mentions cleric or church in it. Paley's Guide (1844) has: "The font is plain octagonal." The Notes and Queries issue of 10 April 1943 http://nq.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/reprint/184/8/235-c.pdf] [accessed 14 October 2007] includes a report from a F.J. Bywaters to the effect that "a new font cover with the inscription was placed in 1937" on the font at Sawston church. The same journal [http://nq.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/reprint/194/18/375.pdf] [accessed 14 October 2007], issue of 3 September 1949 quotes from an archidiaconal visitation of 1685 which cited, among other complaints, "the Font nasty and noe Plugg". The Victoria County History (Cambridge..., vol. 6, 1978) notes: "Sawston church was probably founded by the Pirot family. Ralph Pirot (fl. 1166–95) was said to have pledged it to the Hospitallers' preceptory of Shingay, as security for a loan of barley, which he failed to repay, and the church, with a messuage and 1 yardland, passed to Shingay. [...] Its earliest architectural feature is the head of an early-12th-century doorway, reset in the chancel in the 13th century, suggesting an earlier chancel occupying the area that became the eastern end of the nave"; no font mentioned in the VCH entry. The Parish web site [www.stmaryssawston.org.uk/history/] [accessed 24 May 2016] informs: "The Victorians filled the church with pitch pine pews, a new font [...] In the twentieth century, the pews were replaced with chairs and the wooden platforms on which they stood were removed and the floor paved. The font was moved from a place by the south door to its present position."