St Mary’s Priory Church, Deerhurst

A Bit of History…

St Mary’s church is one of the finest and most complete buildings in England to survive from before the Norman Conquest.

The exact date of the building is unknown, but what is known is that the church was already here in the 8th century. There is also reason to believe that the church could have been established at Deerhurst as early as the 6th or 7th century, and it is possible that the church was the most important in the region.

The church was built as part of a Saxon monastery when Deerhurst was part of the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Mercia. From the Anglo-Saxon era until the Dissolution of the Monasteries St Mary’s was the church of a Benedictine priory.

The church was restored and altered in the 10th century after the Viking invasion of England. It was enlarged early in the 13th century and altered in the 14th and 15th centuries. Deerhurst church has been described as “an Anglo-Saxon monument of the first order”.

Deerhurst played an important role in 1016 when King Cnut of Denmark and King Edmund Ironside met at Deerhurst, made peace and divided England between them. In the middle of the 11th century Deerhurst was the residence of Earl Odda, one of the most important men in England during the reign of Edward the Confessor. Earl Odda died in 1056 soon after the dedication of a second church building now known as Odda’s Chapel, which is about 200 yards south-west of St Mary’s.

After the Dissolution of the Monasteries the priory church became a parish church, as it remains to this day. There was a major restoration of the building in the 1860s when many of the Anglo-Saxon features now visible were discovered.

There are some magnificent Anglo-Saxon carved stones and sculpture inside and outside the church, much of it from the 9th century. Outside, set high into the wall of the church in the ruined apse is the famous ‘Angel of Deerhurst’. There is also a 9th-century grave cover (built into a north wall door in the chancel), an early-9th century carving of the Virgin and Child located on the west tower wall, several 10th-century panels in the nave, a series of carved beast-heads including two at the west end and two on the chancel arch, a pair of animal head label stops on either side of the porch entrance, and a beautifully carved 9th-century font. Carved from a single block of limestone, the font is the finest Saxon font in existence today.

There are many surviving Anglo-Saxon arches, doorways and windows. There is a collection of medieval glass at the west end of the south aisle, including a fine 14th-century figure of St Catherine and a 15th-century figure of St Alphege.

Set into the floor of the north aisle is a memorial brass dedicated to the Cassey family dating to about the year 1400. It shows the family and includes a dog called Terri, one of the earliest known representations of a named pet.

An Anglo-Saxon painted figure of a saint carrying a book in a veiled hand was recently discovered on a stone panel high on the east wall of the nave. It is thought to be dated to the 10th century which would make it the oldest known wall-painting in any church in Britain.