Tewkesbury Abbey

In 1540, when Henry VIII’s commissioners closed the monastery at Tewkesbury, the great abbey church was due to be stripped and demolished. The townspeople stepped in and bought it from the king for £453, the value of its lead roofs and bells, to use as their parish church. That is why one of the finest Norman churches in England is still standing in a small Gloucestershire market town, with one of the largest Norman towers anywhere rising over the meadows where the Avon meets the Severn.

Normans, Despensers and the Wars of the Roses

There may have been a monastery at Tewkesbury from the eighth century, but the abbey we see was founded by Robert Fitzhamon, a cousin of William the Conqueror, and the present church was begun in 1102 and consecrated in 1121. It was built of Caen stone brought from Normandy, and the nave, the central tower and the great arch of the west front are all of this first campaign.

In the fourteenth century the abbey became the burial place of the Despensers, one of the most powerful and most hated families in England. Hugh Despenser the younger, the favourite of Edward II, was executed in 1326, and the east end of the church, begun in the 1320s, was rebuilt largely under his widow, Eleanor de Clare, as a family mausoleum, with a new vault and windows of brilliant glass. The chantry chapels of the Despensers and their heirs, the Beauchamps, crowd round the high altar.

On 4 May 1471 the Battle of Tewkesbury was fought just south of the abbey. Edward IV destroyed the Lancastrian army, and Henry VI’s seventeen-year-old son, Edward, Prince of Wales, was killed and buried here. Lancastrian survivors who fled into the church were dragged out and executed, and the building was so defiled that it had to be reconsecrated. Seven years later Edward IV’s own brother, George, Duke of Clarence, executed for treason, was buried in a vault behind the high altar.

After the townspeople bought it in 1540 the abbey became a parish church, which it still is. Its Victorian restoration, from 1875 under George Gilbert Scott, so dismayed William Morris that it prompted him to found the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings in 1877.

The visitor's cheat sheet

What to see, in the order you meet it

The west front

Approach from the west, along Church Street. The west front is dominated by a single recessed arch about twenty metres high, a piece of Norman architecture with nothing quite like it in England. The window inside the arch is a replacement of 1686, after the original was blown in by a storm.

The nave

Inside, the nave is lined by fourteen enormous round pillars, each about nine metres high and as thick as an oak tree. They were built in the early twelfth century to carry a Norman timber roof; in the fourteenth century the Despensers added the stone vault above, with a line of carved bosses down the middle that tell the life of Christ. Binoculars help, but the abbey also puts out a mirror.

The crossing and the presbytery

At the crossing, look up into the vault under the tower. Then go east into the presbytery, Eleanor de Clare’s rebuilding of the 1330s. Its seven windows contain some of the finest fourteenth-century glass in England, with armoured knights of the Despenser and Clare families standing in the lights. On the vault above are golden suns: the “sun in splendour” badge of Edward IV, added after his victory in 1471. In the floor of the choir a brass plate marks the grave of Edward, Prince of Wales, the last of the direct Lancastrian line.

The chantry chapels

Around the presbytery are the tombs and chantries that make Tewkesbury one of the richest collections of medieval monuments in England. Look up at the roof of the Trinity Chapel to see Edward Despenser, who died in 1375, kneeling in armour under a canopy, turned towards the high altar — a painted figure with almost no parallel in England. The Beauchamp Chantry, built in the 1420s by Isabel Despenser for her first husband, the Earl of Worcester, has a delicate stone vault of almost lace-like intricacy.

In the north ambulatory is the strangest monument of all, the Wakeman Cenotaph: a carved stone corpse, half decayed, with a worm, a snake, a frog, a snail and a mouse crawling over it. It is named after John Wakeman, the last abbot, who surrendered the abbey in 1539 and became the first bishop of Gloucester; he is buried elsewhere, and the tomb may not be his at all.

The Milton Organ and the sacristy door

The abbey’s oldest organ, known as the Milton Organ, was built in the 1630s for Magdalen College, Oxford. In the Commonwealth it was taken to Hampton Court, where John Milton is said to have played it, and it came to Tewkesbury in 1737. Nearby, the old door of the sacristy is said to be lined on its inside with plates of armour picked up from the battlefield in 1471.

Tickets and tours

Don't miss

• The west front arch A Norman arch some twenty metres high.
• The nave pillars Fourteen of them, nine metres tall, under a painted vault.
• The presbytery glass Fourteenth-century knights in armour, and the Yorkist suns above.
• The kneeling knight Edward Despenser at prayer on the roof of his chantry.
• The Wakeman Cenotaph A stone corpse and its attendant vermin.
• Prince Edward's grave The brass in the choir floor for the prince killed in 1471.
• The tower More than 200 steps, and the best view in Gloucestershire.

Insider tips

Tewkesbury is built on low ground between two rivers, and it floods. In the great floods of July 2007 the abbey stood on a small island of dry land while the town around it was under water, in a photograph seen around the world.

The town itself is one of the best-preserved in England, with timber-framed houses, narrow alleys and old inns. Abbey Mill, on the river behind the abbey, is a short walk.

Where to stay and eat nearby

The abbey has a refectory café. Church Street and the High Street, running north from the abbey, have pubs, tearooms and restaurants in old timber-framed buildings. Cheltenham, twenty minutes away, has a wider choice of hotels.

More English churches

• Gloucester Cathedral — another Norman abbey, twenty minutes away, whose first bishop was Tewkesbury’s last abbot
• Worcester Cathedral — up the Severn, with King John’s tomb
• Bath Abbey — another great abbey church that became a parish church

See all the cathedrals and churches worth visiting in England →