Odstock

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Odstock is a village in the county of Wiltshire, two miles (3.2 km) south of Salisbury. In the woods about Odstock are earthworks. The meaning of the name is probably "Odo's stockade". In 1801 Odstock's total population was 118. In 1901 it was 158. By 1971 the population was 535.

Odstock Hospital - now Salisbury District Hospital - is famous for its specialist burns and spinal units. The hospital was originally set up during the Second World War by the British Government in 1942. From 1943 this was used by the United States 5th Army Medical Corps and provided support for the Normandy landings in 1944. With the creation of the National Health Service in 1948, Odstock Hospital was selected to house the new regional Plastic and Oral Surgery Centre providing care for patients in five counties.

What is now the Yew Tree Inn was a pair of 18th century cottages. George Ford is listed as a beer retailer and shopkeeper in Odstock in 1875 and is likely the first Landlord of the Inn. His ancestors still own a small bed and breakfast in the area:Hillside B&B

Oliver Cromwell is said to have stayed in Odstock in a 17th-century house that was once an inn called the Parsonage.

Odstock Church was built in 1297. At the Church there is the grave of Joshua Scamp who to protect his daughter, took the blame for his son-in-law's theft of a horse, and was hanged. Legend has it that after Joshuas death a curse was put on the Church.

The Legend goes as follows:

Joshua Scamp, a gypsy, was wrongfully hanged for horse-stealing in 1801. Scamp became a martyr among his people, and each year they assembled around his grave on the anniversary of his death, after first drinking lengthily to his memory in the nearby Yew Tree Inn. One year, the rector and his churchwardens decided to stop the riotous celebrations by locking the church door and uprooting a briar rose which the Gypsies had planted by Scamp's grave. The thwarted Gypsies put a curse on anyone who should in future lock the church door, and after sudden death befell two who defied the curse the rector threw the church key into the River Ebble, where it is said still to lie.

Bluebells in odstock woods.