Little Sodbury is an

English English usually refers to: * English language * English people English may also refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England ** English national ...

village in

South Gloucestershire South Gloucestershire is a unitary authority area in the ceremonial county of Gloucestershire, South West England. Towns in the area include Yate, Chipping Sodbury, Thornbury, Filton, Patchway and Bradley Stoke, the latter three forming ...

, located between

Chipping Sodbury Chipping Sodbury is a market town and former civil parish, now in the parish of Sodbury, in the unitary authority area of South Gloucestershire, in the ceremonial county of Gloucestershire, England. It was founded in the 12th century by Will ...

, to the West, Old Sodbury to the South,

Badminton Badminton is a racquet sport played using racquets to hit a shuttlecock across a net. Although it may be played with larger teams, the most common forms of the game are "singles" (with one player per side) and "doubles" (with two players p ...

, and the

A46 road The A46 is a major A road in England. It starts east of Bath, Somerset and ends in Cleethorpes, Lincolnshire, but it does not form a continuous route. Large portions of the old road have been lost, bypassed, or replaced by motorway developmen ...

to the East and Horton and

Hawkesbury Upton Hawkesbury Upton is a village in South Gloucestershire, England, east of the much smaller Hawkesbury. It lies north of Horton, east of Dunkirk and south of Alderley and Hillesley. Hawkesbury Upton is close to the A46 road. The village lies ...

, to the north. The "manor of Sodbury" comprises the nearby

and Old Sodbury: it is distinct from that of Little Sodbury. St Adeline's Church was built in 1859 by William James. The 15th century, Little Sodbury Manor was the home of Sir John Walsh who employed

William Tyndale William Tyndale (; sometimes spelled ''Tynsdale'', ''Tindall'', ''Tindill'', ''Tyndall''; – ) was an English biblical scholar and linguist who became a leading figure in the Protestant Reformation in the years leading up to his execu ...

as chaplain and tutor to his grandchildren in 1522–3; by tradition he began his translation of the Bible in his bedroom here. The manor retains the porch and

Great Hall A great hall is the main room of a royal palace, castle or a large manor house or hall house in the Middle Ages, and continued to be built in the country houses of the 16th and early 17th centuries, although by then the family used the gr ...

, with a timber roof resting on corbels carved as shield-bearing angels, of the fifteenth-century courtyard house. The house fell into disrepair in the nineteenth century, but was restored by architect Sir

Harold Brakspear Sir Harold Brakspear KCVO (10 March 1870 – 20 November 1934) was an English restoration architect and archaeologist. He restored a number of ancient and notable buildings, including Bath Abbey, Windsor Castle, Brownston House in Devizes and ...

for Lord Grosvenor and later Baron de

Tuyll Tuyll is the name of a noble Dutch family, with familial and historical links to England, whose full name is Van Tuyll van Serooskerken. Several knights, members of various courts, literary figures, generals, ambassadors, statesmen and explorers ...

. Little Sodbury's Iron Age

hill fort A hillfort is a type of earthwork used as a fortified refuge or defended settlement, located to exploit a rise in elevation for defensive advantage. They are typically European and of the Bronze Age or Iron Age. Some were used in the post-Roma ...

reshaped by the Romans is accessible from the village via the

Cotswold Way The Cotswold Way is a long-distance footpath, running along the Cotswold Edge escarpment of the Cotswold Hills in England. It was officially inaugurated as a National Trail on 24 May 2007 and several new rights of way have been created. His ...

at . There is a

Royal Observer Corps The Royal Observer Corps (ROC) was a civil defence organisation intended for the visual detection, identification, tracking and reporting of aircraft over Great Britain. It operated in the United Kingdom between 29 October 1925 and 31 Decembe ...

post at . Little Sodbury is one of three

Thankful Villages Thankful Villages (also known as Blessed Villages; ) are settlements in England and Wales from which all their members of the armed forces survived World War I. The term Thankful Village was popularised by the writer Arthur Mee in the 1930s; in ' ...

in Gloucestershire – those rare places that suffered no fatalities during the

Great War World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...

of 1914 to 1918.

References

David Verey Sir David John Verey CBE (born 1950) is an English banker and philanthropist. Early life Verey was born on 8 December 1950. He went to school at Eton College and later received a Master of Arts degree in English from Trinity College, Cambridge. ...

, ''Gloucestershire: the Cotswolds'', The Buildings of England edited by

Nikolaus Pevsner Sir Nikolaus Bernhard Leon Pevsner (30 January 1902 – 18 August 1983) was a German-British art historian and architectural historian best known for his monumental 46-volume series of county-by-county guides, '' The Buildings of England'' ...

, 2nd ed. (1979) , pp. 303–304 * Anthony Emery, "Greater Medieval Houses of England and Wales, 1300-1500: Southern England", Cambridge University Press, 2006, , p. 115

External links

Sodbury Players
- local amateur dramatics group in the Yate and Chipping Sodbury Area * GENUKI
Little Sodbury

The Modern Antiquarian: Little Sodbury Hillfort
Villages in South Gloucestershire District Hill forts in Gloucestershire Civil parishes in Gloucestershire {{SouthGloucestershire-geo-stub