Lyscombe Chapel

Lyscombe Chapel is a detached chapel with a 12th-century chancel and a nave largely rebuilt in the 15th and 16th centuries. It likely served as a dwelling in the 17th century and is now disused and semi-derelict. The chapel is constructed of flint walls with bonding courses and rubble dressings, alongside some later brick dressings. The entire structure is now covered by a corrugated iron roof supported on iron stanchions located outside the walls.

The east window is an original single-light design, slightly widened in the 13th century and featuring a chamfered trefoil head. A narrow, original window on the north wall retains a rebated round head and splayed reveals, although it is now mutilated. A south wall window is an original design that has been enlarged and fitted with a 20th-century surround. The mid-12th century chancel arch is two-centred, with two plain orders on the west side and a flat east side. The responds have half-round shafts supporting the inner order, and smaller shafts under the outer order. The capitals are scalloped with moulded abaci that continue as a string on the west. The lower parts of the north and south responds are destroyed, and the capitals have been defaced. Floor beams and a stone stair were inserted into the chancel in the late 16th century.

The nave is an aisleless single unit. The south wall was rebuilt in the 15th century, with the north wall rebuilt in the late 16th century. A part of the chamfered east jamb of the south doorway remains near the ground, above which is a window of uncertain date, now partly blocked and altered by the insertion of a second opening. The late 16th century west wall is gabled and contains a window with chamfered jambs cut from a single stone. The opening is now square but retains traces of two pointed lights and a central mullion. Two 18th-century openings are present in the lower storey of the west wall. A floor with stop-chamfered beams was inserted in the nave, similar to the chancel, though these beams no longer survive.

This chapel forms part of a small medieval downland group with an obscure history. The land of 3½ hides at Lyscombe originally formed part of the endowment of Milton Abbey. The chapel is mentioned in 1311 alongside the chapels of Woolland and Whitcombe. It passed into lay hands when Henry VIII granted the Abbey’s possessions to Sir John Tregonwell in 1540. It is a Scheduled Ancient Monument.