A Place Where a Deer Now Stands Alone.

 

Strange events occurred in Deepest Darkest England hundreds of years ago.

Some not too far from here.

Few people are aware of them, but as I love stories and am drawn to such tales and their associated sites like a moth to a candle I am often to be found standing in lonely country fields looking over a windswept landscape where something strange once occurred.

There was a deer standing in this particular field and it seemed an omen that we had indeed found the place: Walton Grounds, where once a princess had given birth to a remarkable prince 1347 years ago.

We’d travelled south-west towards the very edge of Northamptonshire’s border to where it touches the gentle hills of the Cotswolds. We had found a village called Kings Sutton: a delightful small village which had proclaimed its existence with a strikingly narrow church spire. This place had once belonged to the ancient kingdom of Mercia at a time when England’s diverse regions were being ruled by different warring kings.

I didn’t think that the church would be open, so many churches are locked these days, and did not dare to turn the handle for fear of disappointment; and so I was delighted when as the handle was turned the old door swung slowly open upon its weights.

We saw the treasure we had come to see immediately we stepped inside the church, and I was thrilled.

Others seek gold and silver, whilst I seek stone.

The stone we had come to see was in a side aisle.

A font.

A font quite different from the ornately carved fonts that can be found in other ancient churches: this one was resplendent in its ugliness.

I touched it and felt a brief electrical charge before it became dull stone once more.

This was reputedly the hollowed stone that an infant saint had once demanded to be brought to him, long ago in AD 662, so that he could be baptised. A stone that initially could not be moved from its position in a lowly hut until the infant saint declared that it should be brought to him by the Christian clergy in the gathered company.

This infant then named himself Rumwald (now written as Rumbold), preached, and then died, just three days after his birth.

This is the reputed hollowed stone that was used for the baptism of this extraordinary infant.

It looks wrong.

The kingdom of Mercia was pagan and on the cusp of falling into Christianity at the time of Rumwald’s birth. This heavy, hollowed stone would therefore have been pagan in origin. A stone used for the older pagan traditions associated with rebirth, knowledge and the gift of prophecy. Similar stones can be found in Ireland at Knowth. They are rounded, and some have carvings inside. They are usually softly rounded, or even unhewn.

This stone that now serves as a font has been roughly treated. Whatever was once carved upon its outer sides have now been scoured away.

Its once rounded form has been hacked into the rough geometric shape of an irregular heptagon. It is as if the craftsman working upon it suddenly felt that a seven-sided stone would have more resonance than an octagonal one, or even a hexagon; but had unhappily reached this conclusion long after he’d already begun his work. So the stone has irregular sides that are difficult to count with accuracy and which perhaps betray darker motives afoot in the separation of the stone from its original purpose and tradition.

Worse is the lead lining that blackens the stone’s interior. The lead poisons the water within the hollow; and I wonder whether it was placed there because of a crack or to hide any inner carvings.

The light reflected from the water’s surface is remarkable and suggests it could once have been used for divination, or perhaps even scrying before it was subsumed into Rumwald’s story.

 

This font, I later discover, was discovered hidden in the churchyard in the 1920s before it was taken into the church. Perhaps the church sensible of its pagan association had not wanted it within its walls. Perhaps it is a fake. I can easily imagine that it was at that time that the ugly brutal rough crosses were incised into its sides.

There is therefore some doubt that this is indeed the correct stone, but I can imagine it to be so.

So as for the rest of story:

Long, long ago, a princess of the ancient Kingdom of Mercia, a daughter of King Penda was travelling with her husband and their retinue late in the year. In Walton Fields near the village of Sutton, on perhaps November 3^rd she gave birth to a boy. This child immediately called out, ‘I am a Christian’ three times. He then demanded to be baptised using a special stone that none could move save the Christian chaplains.

This child was subsequently baptised by Bishop Widerino (Widerin), assisted by Eadwold, a priest, in water contained within a hollow stone that was found lying in a field. Following his baptism Rumwald was immediately confirmed, and then took part in communion. Upon receiving these sacraments he commenced to preach for three days. Finally, he predicted his death and gave detailed instructions for his burial and shrine before he died.

Some say his mother was Cyneburh (Cuneburga) ,who had married a prince from Northumbria called Alhfrith. Some say that she had refused to have anything to do with her new husband until he’d converted to Christianity. He had willingly agreed to her request. Some also say that they went on to have another son called Osric who later became a king in Northumbria.

Rumwald, the boy saint, was first buried at Sutton by Eadwold as he had requested. The following year he was transferred to Brackley, again according to his request, by Bishop Widerino (Widerin) on perhaps the 28^th August, and finally in the third year after his birth his remains were moved to Buckingham, where a shrine was erected for him in the church. This shrine and the saints relics were then lost during Cromwell’s reformation and the collapse of that church.

Holy wells in Astrop, Brackley and Buckingham became associated with the name of Rumwald and miracles were associated with them. A chapel was also built in his memory in the meadows where he was born, but this was neglected, crumbled over time and was eventually taken down.

A cult formed around Rumwald’s story. Kings Sutton, Brackley and Buckingham becoming the focus of pilgrimages and devotional offerings, the associated churches thrived until the cult was suppressed and almost forgotten. Perhaps this suppression was because the story itself seemed to have been derived more from folk lore and fanciful oral traditions and owed more to a pagan past than to a Christian future.

Whatever happened, for five hundred the people in the south of Northamptonshire had a most unusual cult of their own, which also unwittingly carried into the present time a little ancient pagan lore to a place where a deer now stands alone.