DEERHURST, a parish partly in the lower division
of the hundred of DEERHURST, and partly in the lower
division of the hundred of WESTMINSTER, county of
GLOUCESTER, 2 miles (S. W.) from Tewkesbury, containing,
with the hamlets of Apperley with Whitefield,
and Deerhurst-Walton, 742 inhabitants. The living is a
perpetual curacy, within the jurisdiction of the peculiar
court of Deerhurst, endowed with £ 600 royal bounty, and
£ 1400 parliamentary grant, and in the patronage of the
Bishop of Gloucester. The church, dedicated to the Holy
Trinity, and exhibiting portions in the Norman, the early
English, and the decorated, styles of architecture, formerly
belonged to a priory established about 715, by the Mercian
duke, Doddo, one of .the founders, of Tewkesbury abbey:
this priory having been destroyed by the Danes, was
re-founded in 980, and given by Edward the Confessor
to the Benedictine abbey of St. Denis, in France, to
which it became a cell; upon the seizure of Alien
priories it was granted to Eton College, but Edward IV.,
revoking that grant, made it a cell to the abbey of
Tewkesbury, and so it remained till the dissolution:
the remains of the structure, which have been converted
into a farm-house, are in the later style of English
architecture, much enriched with decorated tracery.
The navigable river Severn, flows along the western
boundary of the parish. Deerhurst gives the title of
viscount to. the noble family of Coventry.