Description
Deerhurst, a village and a parish in Gloucestershire. The village stands on the river Severn, at the boundary with Worcestershire, 3 miles SW of Tewkesbury. It gives the title of Viscount to the Earl of Coventry. The parish includes also the hamlets of Deerhurst-Walton and Apperley, and has a post office under Tewkesbury; money order and telegraph office, Tewkesbury. Acreage, 3138; population, 712. The monastery of Deerhurst, with which the parish church was connected, is known to have existed for full 800 years, down to the period of the general suppression of monastic institutions. In the year 804 Ethelric, Earl of a district of Mercia, bestowed valuable estates upon it; but the monks already possessed landed property equal in extent to about twelve modem parishes. Edward the Confessor gave half of the estates to St Peter's, Westminster, and the other half, with the monastery, to the house of St Denis, near Paris; thus it became an alien priory. Edward IV. gave it as a cell to Tewkesbury Abbey. A large part of the domestic buildings of the priory, dating from the 14th century, remains standing, and has been turned into a farmhouse. Whilst the domestic buildings suffered severely at the hands of the destroyer, the church (one of the most interesting in England) seems to have escaped with much less injury, and in some of its main features probably presents us with an example of Saxon work of the 8th century. The celebrated Odda Stone (preserved at Oxford), which was supposed to be connected with the church and to supply its date (1056), is now, with good reason, connected with the Saxon chapel (brought to light in 1885) which stands about 80 yards from the churchyard. The living is a vicarage in the diocese of Gloucester and Bristol; value, £312 with residence. Patron, the Bishop of Gloucester and Bristol. The tower, which is four storeys high, is a good example of Anglo-Saxon architecture with Norman additions. Additions have been made to the church at various dates, and it was restored in 1861, and contains two brasses, one of them a fine canopied brass of Chief-Baron Cassey. There is a Wesleyan chapel at Apperley.
Villages, Hamlets, &c.
Apperley, a hamlet in Deerhurst parish, Gloucestershire, on the river Severn, 4 miles SW of Tewkesbury, under which it has a post office, and at which is the money order and telegraph office. It is very flat, and subject to frequent inundation. Apperiey Court stands on an eminence; it contains a large and unique collection of fossils and geological specimens. There is a cliapel of ease.
