PHOTO CREDIT:

The Wolverton and District Archaeological and Historical Society.

"By kind permission of Roger Emery"

http://www.mkheritage.co.uk/wdahs/pass/docs/church/gravestones.html Date accessed: 25 Mar 2012.

MEMORIAL AND GRAVESTONE INSCRIPTIONS:

"by kind permission of Northamptonshire Family History Society"

URL: http://www.mkheritage.co.uk/wdahs/pass/docs/church/gravestones.html Date accessed: 22 March 2012.

CHURCH & CHURCHYARD CEMETERY DESCRIPTION:

The St Guthlac's Passenham Church and Churchyard Cemetery are next to the Passenham Manor House and the Passenham Manor Farm.

In addition to headstones in their original positions in the churchyard, a line of headstones and footstones have been removed and are leaning against the east wall of the churchyard, many with illegible inscriptions. Some burials are made within the church itself.

Richly beautiful, the historic church and chuchyard date back to medieval times with the oldest bell in the bell tower dated as medieval. The four other bells are dated 1585, 1624, 1635 and 1711. The church consists of a west tower, nave, chancel and south porch. The nave and lower part of the tower date to the later 13th century.

"Today the carefully restored, richly furnished and strikingly decorated interior remains an impressive monument to the faith and wealth of Sir Robert Banastre in the seventeenth century, Pulter Forrester in the eighteenthth, and Cdr. and Mrs. Lawson in the twentieth."

Other notables include Miss Day of Stony Stratford with her 1867 donation of a stained glass window and E. Clive Rouse and Ann Ballantyne with their 1962-1966 renovation of the wall paintings.

Source: 'Passenham', A History of the County of Northampton: Volume 5: The Hundred of Cleley (2002), pp. 208-245. URL: http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=22787 Date accessed: 24 March 2012.