Editing Pershore Abbey (section)

==="Second" refoundation===
[[File:Pershore Abbey Nave.JPG|thumb|250px|right|The chancel]]
Pershore suffered worse misfortune when, according to Leland, it was destroyed by fire and subsequently deserted by the monks,<ref name=LelandIter /><ref name=Victoria /> probably in the year 1002.<ref name=ODNBOdda>Williams, "Odda, earl (''d''. 1056)"</ref> The monastic archives were largely lost in the event, as no original record from before that date survives today.<ref name=ODNBOdda /> Pershore, however, found a generous patron in the wealthy nobleman [[Odda of Deerhurst]] (d. 1056), who restored many of its lands and granted new ones. It has been suggested{{who|date=April 2019}} that he was a kinsman of the ealdorman Æthelweard. The earliest extant record from the archive of Pershore, a charter of 1014 by which King Æthelred granted Mathon (Herefordshire) to ealdorman Leofwine, may testify to Odda's restorations of lands to the house.<ref name=ODNBOdda /><ref>[http://www.anglo-saxons.net/hwaet/?do=seek&query=S+932 S 932].</ref> The monastery was active again by the 1020s, as its abbot Brihtheah was promoted bishop of Worcester in 1033.<ref name=ODNBOdda /> Odda's brother Ælfric was buried at Pershore in 1053, joined three years later by Odda himself.<ref name=ODNBOdda />

In Odda's lifetime the total landed assets of Pershore grew to 300 hides, but after the loss of its benefactor in 1056 about two-thirds were seized and given to [[Edward the Confessor]]'s new foundation at Westminster.<ref name=ODNBOdda /> The original single sheet which preserves the fullest version of King Edgar's refoundation charter (though it need not be authentic) is marked by a number of textual alterations and erasures. Some of these changes may suggest a response to the abbey's proprietary struggles.<ref name=Stokes72-3 />

From the early 12th century there is evidence that Pershore Abbey claimed possession of some of the relics of Saint [[Eadburh of Winchester]], the [[saint]]ed daughter of King [[Edward the Elder]]. Her body was initially buried at [[Nunnaminster]] (Winchester), but it was translated in the 960s to a more central spot in [[Winchester]], and again to a shrine in the 970s. Among several possibilities, Susan Ridyard has suggested that the Eadburh whose relics were preserved at Pershore may have been a Mercian saint of that name whose identity had become obscure.<ref name="ReferenceA"/>