St Mary the Virgin church
Dodford has a Grade 1 listed parish church, called St Mary the Virgin. It was founded by the Normans in 1066, rebuilt by Ralph de Keynes in 1100, and the tower and north chapel were added by William de Keynes in 1221. St Mary's has a nave with a north aisle and a clerestory on the north side only. The arcade, of four bays, is 14th century. The south wall of the nave has two plain 12th-century splayed windows, of which the west one is now blocked, and part of the plain arch of a doorway; on the exterior there is much herringbone masonry. The south porch is of two storeys. The chancel was rebuilt in the 19th century. The church contains an elaborately-carved 12th-century font.
Dodford church has the distinction of being the first church that the antiquary Elias Ashmole (founder of the Ashmolean Museum) is known to have visited with the aim of recording its inscriptions, armorial bearings etc. Ashmole visited Dodford church on 15 April 1657, and his handwritten notes are now in the Bodleian Library.
There is a tall 13th-century west tower which was structurally crumbling until major repairs in the late 20th century. It contains a ring of six bells, each of which was cast in a different year between 1614 and 1907. The bells hang in a timber frame placed diagonally in the tower. This is a weak layout and the bells remained neglected and unringable for several decades until essential frame strengthening was carried out in 2007.
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