Deerhurst - Odda´s Chapel

Earl Odda, a kinsman of Edward the Confessor, had the chapel built for the benefit of the soul of his brother Ælfric, who died in 1053. Ealdred, Bishop of Worcester consecrated it in 1056. It is an 11th-century late Anglo-Saxon building, completed a decade before the Norman Conquest of England.

Late in the 16th or early in the 17th century the chapel building was re-used as part of a timber-framed farmhouse, Abbot's Court, which was built against its east wall. The nave was converted into a kitchen. A first floor was inserted in the chancel. Three- and four-light domestic windows were inserted in the north and south walls of the chancel. In 1675 a local landowner discovered a stone slab near Deerhurst. He was able to decipher the slab's 11th-century Latin inscription concerning the dedication of the chapel. However, the chapel itself remained unidentified. In 1865 the then Vicar of the parish church, deduced from a chronicle of Tewkesbury Abbey and from the existence of Odda's Stone that there had been a chantry chapel. In 1885 during repairs to Abbot's Court a blocked Anglo-Saxon window was discovered hidden behind plaster.