Odda's Chapel

Odda's chapel
Dedication stone set up by Earl Odda, dated 1056, now at the Ashmolean Museum
The chancel arch

Odda's Chapel is a surviving Anglo-Saxon church at Deerhurst, Gloucestershire. Earl Odda had it built for the benefit of the soul of his brother Ælfric, who died on 22 December 1053. Ealdred, Bishop of Worcester consecrated it; an inscription dates the dedication to 12 April 1056. The chapel is partly incorporated into a 16th or early 17th century farmhouse and was being used for accommodation when in 1865 its historic significance was realised. In 1885 Odda's Chapel was recognised as a chapel and disentangled from the farmhouse called Abbot's Court.

English Heritage maintains the chapel. It is a Grade I listed building (reference number 126585).[1] It is in the larger Deerhurst Monastic Site protected heritage area, which includes the remains of the early Benedictine Deerhurst Abbey, Priory and St Mary's Priory Church.[2]

Restoration of the roof of Odda's Chapel started in 1965. Early photographs show that although the main part of the roof is 17th century there was an earlier design of 11th-12th century date which may be part of the original roof.[1]

The stone with the dedication inscription was discovered in 1675 by Sir John Powell, a local landowner. The Latin inscription can be translated as "Earl Odda ordered this royal hall to be built and dedicated in honour of the Holy Trinity for the soul of his brother Ælfric, taken up from this place. Ealdred was the bishop who dedicated the building on the second day before Ides of April in the fourteenth year of the reign of Edward, king of the English". The stone is in the collection of the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford.

There have been a number of excavations at Deerhurst since the 1970s. Items from the 1981 excavation led by Philip Rahtz are in Tewkesbury Museum.[3]

References

  1. 1 2 Pastscape: Oddas Chapel
  2. ↑ English Heritage: Odda's Chapel
  3. ↑ Linnell, E. M. (1986), Transactions of the Bristol and Gloucestershire Archaeological Society; 104
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Coordinates: 51°58′1″N 2°11′31″W / 51.96694°N 2.19194°W / 51.96694; -2.19194

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