Sigurd's struggles with the dragon - and temple's battle over parking

THE setting was the Bentley Hotel and the event was a “nerve-racking” auction to determine the fate of a beautiful 16th-century chapel.

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Among those gathered inside the Best Western site was Ralph Harrison, the head of an organisation which had its roots in the 1970s but which was yet to acquire a proper building of its own.

What was this organisation and what were its aims? This question has rarely been asked since Mr Harrison's Odinist Fellowship acquired the chapel in 2014 for £42,000.

Ask the question of neighbours and you will get rather disconcerting answers. “In the winter you can look through the window at night and see them all in there, it looks almost Satanic", one says.

Another adds: “They're in there at night looking like Gandalf and the wizards. It should never have been given over, it should have been respected for the building it is.”

The Tudor chapel sold for £1

The Bede House Chapel was built in 1556 and once served the historic almshouses that surrounded it. The almshouses were then knocked down in favour of the Bede House Court development, built in 1979, that surrounds the chapel.

Residents report that the chapel was sold to Newark and Sherwood District Council at that stage for just £1. After using it for a number of years, the council unsuccessfully tried to rent out the chapel as office space before proceeding to the auction.

The structure, given Grade II listed status in 1950, has been in the hands of the Odinist Fellowship for over a decade now. Attention has recently been drawn to the fellowship after Hope Not Hate named it in its annual report on the state of the far-right for two years running.

The claim of the Fellowship being far-right and racially exclusive has been flatly denied by the head of the group, but the Charity Commission launched a review after The Post highlighted Hope Not Hate's report.

The Post visited the Newark Odinist Temple to understand how fellowship director Ralph Harrison would describe the religion dubbed by some experts as a magnet for extremists.