Passenham

The Victoria County History notes (Northampton, vol. 5, 2002): "Although there is no reference to a church in Passenham in Domesday Book, the royal estate there had soke over part of Cosgrove. [...] This, and the dedication to the 8th-century Mercian saint Guthlac, suggest that the church at Passenham had once been the centre of a larger Anglo-Saxon parochia. [...] The church was valued at £10 in 1291 [...] The lower part of the tower and the nave are of the later 13th century. [...] A new font was given by the rector, Loraine Loraine-Smith, in 1834 […] A plan in 1938 to form a baptistry at the west end of the south side of the nave, including the replacement of the font, was turned down by the diocesan advisory committee […] and presumably abandoned after the outbreak of war." The MK Heritage entry [www.mkheritage.co.uk/wdahs/pass/docs/churchtour/ch6.html] [accessed 11 June 2012] notes and illustrates two baptismal fonts in this church: an old wooden cylindrical font, and a "modern Font was donated in 1976 by A. D. A. Lawson in memory of his wife", both of them outside the scope of this Index. [NB: we have no information on the earlier font of this church].