Oddas Chapel

Oddas Chapel (1056AD)

- Deerhurst, Gloucestershire, England UK

Saxon place of worship, Odda’s Chapel. A short walk from St Mary’s (Deerhurst) and a complete contrast. It was ‘rediscovered’ in the late C19th (by the Revd George Butterworth) who reputedly followed up on ‘clues’ given in the medieval chronicle of Tewkesbury Abbey and an inscription on a stone found in an orchard near the parish church (in 1675), which read :


“Earl Odda had this Royal Hall built and dedicated in honour of the Holy Trinity for the soul of his brother Aelfric, which left his body in this place. Bishop Ealdred dedicated it the second of the Ides of April in the fourteenth year of the reign of Edward, King of the English.”

The chapel was built in about 1056  (ten years before the infamous Norman invasion), by Earl Odda, a relative of Edward the Confessor (who was king before Harold who was killed at Hastings in 1066), in memory of his brother Aelfric. Over the succeeding centuries it’s use was lost to history and it was incorporated into a Tudor farm house, before being rediscovered in 1865.

The chapel is built on rising ground, seemingly just above the flood plain of the nearby Severn


Lens used:   Voigtlander 21mm color-skopar F3.5