2ml vial

Raunds Cemetery Chapel.

Raunds is a small market town in rural Northamptonshire, England. It has a population of 8,641 (2011 census), is a civil parish, and is part of the East Northamptonshire district.

Raunds is situated 21 miles (34 km) north-east of Northampton. The town is on the southern edge of the Nene valley and surrounded by arable farming land.

Raunds is close to Stanwick Lakes, a country park developed from gravel pits and managed by the Rockingham Forest Trust.This park is internationally recognised for its birdlife and can be reached on foot from Raunds along Meadow Lane bridleway.

In the mid-1980s, during sand excavations in the Nene valley, the remains of a Roman villa were discovered. Excavation of the area, near Stanwick, was delayed by several years while archaeologists studied the remains. In 2002 Channel 4's Time Teamexcavated a garden and found remains of an Anglo-Saxon cemetery.

The place-name 'Raunds' is first attested in an Anglo-Saxon charter of circa 972-992, where it appears as Randan. It appears asRande in the Domesday Book of 1086, and in a later survey of Northamptonshire as Raundes. The name is the plural of the Old English rand, meaning 'border'.

St Peter's Church, where building work was started in the 13th century, has the second-tallest spire in Northamptonshire at 202 feet (61.5m). The church stands on the site of aSaxon place of worship. During the 15th century patronage of the church changed from St Mary to St Peter. The church features a rare 'left-handed fiddler' decoration above the western entrance. A tomb-chest dedicated to John Wales, vicar from 1447 to 1496, proves the building has been in use for more than 550 years.

Raunds played a role in the boot and shoe industry until its decline in the 1950s and '60s. In 1905 a dispute arose about wages to be paid to army bootmakers, which culminated in a march to London in May that year.Several factories remained into the early 1990s but all are now closed, with many being demolished and housing estates built. The Coggins boot factory was the last to go, and the site of it is now Coggins Close. The land on which the shoe factory and the original Coggins houses stood (not Coggins Close), was purchased by Robert Coggins on 25 February 1899 from the Duchy of Lancaster, for the sum of £14.10s.0d. The houses are still there, but were sold to Charles Robinson ofWellingborough in 1934. Robert Coggins lived in the hall where his picture hangs in the meeting room, and he is buried in St Peter's churchyard. There is no industry in the town now, although there are some industrial sites on the outskirts.

Raunds once held the record for the highest temperature in Britain at 36.7 °C (98.1 °F), set on 10 August 1911, which stood until 1990.

Raunds was the home of broadcaster, writer and television personality Sir David Frost in his youth, when his father, Paradine Frost, was a minister at the Methodist church. It appears that he was a good cricketer, topping the averages at the cricket club in 1956.

Raunds was visited by the Channel 4 programme The Inbetweeners on 19 January 2011, in connection with the Comic Relief fund-raising 'Rude Road Trip', because of the interesting signs: Titty Ho and Butts Road.

“If anybody would like to expand  this series please do, I would just ask that you could let Sadexploration know first at churchmicro@gmail.com so he can keep track of the Church numbers and names to avoid duplication.