St Edwold's Church in
Stockwood, Dorset
:''for Stockwood in Bristol, see Stockwood''
Stockwood is a village in west Dorset, England, around eight miles south-west of Sherborne and less than a mile away from Chetnole railway station on the Heart of Wessex Line. There are a few houses o ...
, England was rebuilt in the 15th century. It is recorded in the
National Heritage List for England as a designated Grade I
listed building,
and is a
redundant church in the care of the
Churches Conservation Trust.
It was declared redundant on 23 January 1959, and was
vested
In law, vesting is the point in time when the rights and interests arising from legal ownership of a property is acquired by some person. Vesting creates an immediately secured right of present or future deployment. One has a vested right to an ...
in the Trust on 1 March 1972.
St Edwold's Church is often described as Dorset's smallest. The church sits next to a farmhouse directly under the wooded heights of Bubb Down. It is a single-celled building. The porch has the date "1636" inscribed, reflecting the fact that the church was rebuilt to some extent in the seventeenth century when a bell turret was also installed.
However, John Newman and
Nikolaus Pevsner in their
Buildings of England volume describe it as "Perp, with Henry VIII side windows and a three-light E window with panel tracery," and also refer to the "delightfully naive bell-turret, round, with a cap on four stumpy columns and a big grotesque face."
Inside, the church is very plainly furnished. The dedication to St Edwold (9th century) is unique in Dorset. Edwold was the brother of St
Edmund the Martyr
Edmund the Martyr (also known as St Edmund or Edmund of East Anglia, died 20 November 869) was king of East Anglia from about 855 until his death.
Few historical facts about Edmund are known, as the kingdom of East Anglia was devastated by t ...
, King of
East Anglia
East Anglia is an area in the East of England, often defined as including the counties of Norfolk, Suffolk and Cambridgeshire. The name derives from the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of the East Angles, a people whose name originated in Anglia, in ...
, and he lived as a recluse at nearby
Cerne after his sibling's death. It is not entirely clear why Stockwood church is dedicated to Edwold, but Kenneth Smith's guidebook suggests that he may have also had a cell here as well as at Cerne.
See also
*
List of churches preserved by the Churches Conservation Trust in South West England
References
Church of England church buildings in Dorset
15th-century church buildings in England
Grade I listed churches in Dorset
Churches preserved by the Churches Conservation Trust
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