Kenton nr. Stowmarket

Listed in Leach (1975) as a font made of Purbeck marble. Baptismal font noted and illustrated in Knott (2023): "The font is also of the 13th Century, one of the Purbeck marble series commonly found in East Anglia, but it is a little different because the sides are canted rather than straight. Hakewill reset it on marble columns in the style of its time, but intriguingly a drawing from earlier in the century shows it set on a typically East Anglian 15th Century font stem. This now stands in the south aisle supporting a statue of the Blessed Virgin and child. There are a number of possibilities, but the most likely one seems to be that there was once a 15th Century font here, and perhaps the bowl was removed from the church during the Commonwealth period to prevent superstitious infant baptisms. This not uncommonly happened in East Anglia. It may be that the font was then lost or badly damaged, and at the return of the Church of England in the 1660s it was replaced with an older font found elsewhere, which is still here today."