St John the Baptist, Old Sodbury

St John the Baptist stands on the hill above Old Sodbury, about 2 miles east of Chipping Sodbury, with the Cotswold Way climbing past its churchyard. It is of Norman origin with a fifteenth-century tower, and it keeps two medieval effigies of knights, one carved in wood and one in stone. It is listed Grade II*.

History

Old Sodbury's church is the older of the two Sodbury churches, and for centuries it was the mother church. When Chipping Sodbury was founded as a market town beside it in the early thirteenth century, its church of St John the Baptist was built as a chapel of ease to Old Sodbury; the two places became one parish again only in 1945.

The listing gives the church twelfth-century origins and a fifteenth-century tower of three stages. In 1858 the rest was remodelled and heavily restored, probably by T H Wyatt, and the roof today is a reproduction in stone tiles, some of them Cotswold stone. The church belongs to the Sodbury Vale Benefice, with Chipping Sodbury, Little Sodbury and Horton.

The coffin path

The paths to the church have a story of their own. The Cotswolds National Landscape's walk leaflet says the path from the church was a coffin trail when Little Sodbury did not have a church, so its dead were carried here for burial. South Gloucestershire Council's Sodburies Trail leaflet tells the same story: an ancient trackway links Little Sodbury and Old Sodbury, and local stories call it the coffin path, because the dead had to be carried all the way to St John's until St Adeline's Church was built at Little Sodbury in 1859.

What to look for

The effigies are the reason to go inside. In the north transept are two tomb recesses with ogee heads: in one lies a fourteenth-century knight carved in wood, and in the other a stone figure of a soldier in high relief from about 1240. Look also for:

• The restored Norman south doorway
• The round piers of the nave, with waterleaf and trumpet capitals and round arches
• The Early English tower arch, with short shafts on carved head corbels and stiff-leaf capitals
• Norman windows at the west ends of the aisles and a reticulated window in the south transept
• The octagonal Perpendicular font
• Two Baroque tablets of 1702 and 1712 to Daniel Burcombe in the south transept, and a tablet of 1676 to William Sheen under the tower

Outside, the churchyard has many table tombs of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and at the top of the path a bench looks out over the village and the country beyond. The lychgate, built as the village war memorial, is listed in its own right, and the parish is raising money to restore it.

Visiting

The benefice publishes no visiting hours, so check with the Sodbury Vale Benefice office on 01454 325160 before a special trip. Sunday services are at 11.15am, alternating between Morning Worship and Holy Communion. The climb to the church is steep on foot; the church's own address is Church Lane, the road up the hill.

Getting there

By car, park free on Chapel Lane in Old Sodbury (near BS37 6LZ) and walk up; the Dog Inn's car park is for its customers. Stagecoach 620 links Old Sodbury with Bath and Tetbury from Monday to Saturday, and Coachstyle 41 runs between Yate and Malmesbury about four times a day.

On foot, Old Sodbury, the hill fort and the church, a 2.5-mile (4km) circuit with no stiles, starts opposite the Dog Inn, climbs to the church and goes on through the lychgate to Sodbury Camp. The Cotswold Way passes the church on its way from Horton to Tormarton.

Nearby

Sodbury Camp, the Iron Age hill fort on Sodbury Hill, where Edward IV camped in 1471, is about a kilometre north, and Horton Camp is further along the edge. The town church, St John the Baptist's, Chipping Sodbury, is about 2 miles west. The Bell at Old Sodbury is a pub with bed and breakfast rooms about a kilometre away, and the Squire is on Broad Street in Chipping Sodbury. Our guide to Chipping Sodbury covers the town, and our story on wassailing tells how Little Sodbury gave verses to the Gloucestershire wassail.