Wendlebury

There is an entry for Wendlebury in the Domesbury survey [http://opendomesday.org/place/SP5619/wendlebury/] [accessed 25 October 2017], but it mentions neither priest nor church in it. Dunkin (1823) writes of the demolition of the "south cross" of the old church in 1639, and of the demolition of the whole church in "the following century when being found incapable of repair it was taken down and the present building erected" [1761]; in the re-built church, adds Dunkin (ibid.), "The font was placed opposite the door", but he does not give any details of the font. The Victoria County History (Oxford, vol. 6, 1959) reports the church as being an 18th-century replacement of the medieval one; in it the VCH notes a "a plain circular font" in this church, and refers to a "Buckler drawing: MS. Top. Oxon. a 69, f. 576." [Bodleian Library collections]. The VCH does not indicate whether this font is from the old church or a new one. Sherwood & Pevsner (1974) suggest the former: "Font. Octagonal, with alternate faces hollowed out. C14?". The village web site [http://www.wendlebury.org.uk/church_home.html] [accessed 19 April 2009] describes the font as Norman, but offers no explanation for the early dating. So does the Akeman Benefice [www.akemanbenefice.org.uk/st-giles-wendlebury/history/] [accessed 25 October 2017]: "We still have our Norman font".