A Walk and The Undead

The other day I was walking in Gloucestershire again, with my brother and walking friends – this time a stroll beside the Severn from Deerhurst to Tewkesbury and back. Deerhurst (a name that sounds more Kent than Gloucestershire) boasts a very remarkable Anglo-Saxon church – a large, complex building which is still not fully understood, but is unmistakably an impressive survival from those times, with later changes and additions. I'm no fan of Anglo-Saxon architecture, which seems to me aesthetically impoverished and frankly rather crude (so kill me), and Deerhurst church is – as even my brother, usually a great one for the Anglo-Saxon, remarked – hard to love. Apart from its antiquarian interest, its major attraction is the Deerhurst Angel, a sculpture that survives high up on what is now an external wall, and which, it has to be said, doesn't look like much compared to that other marvellous survival, the Lichfield Angel. The village also has Odda's Chapel, a chantry built shortly…