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The small market town of TEWKESBURY , ten miles north of Gloucester, stands hemmed in by the Avon and Severn rivers, which converge nearby. Pressure of space accounts for the narrow alleys and courts leading off from the main streets, of which thirty of the original ninety still survive. Almost completely bypassed by the Industrial Revolution, Tewkesbury preserves numerous elegant Georgian houses and medieval timber-framed buildings on its main streets - especially Church Street - and the Norman abbey has survived as one of the greatest in England. The site of Tewkesbury Abbey (daily 7.30am-6pm, closes 5pm in winter) was first selected for a Benedictine monastery in the eighth century, but virtually nothing of the Saxon complex survived a sacking by the Danes, and a new abbey was founded by a Norman nobleman in 1092. The work took about sixty years to complete, with some additions made in the fourteenth century. Two hundred years later the Dissolution brought about the destruction of most of the monastic buildings, but the abbey itself survived. The sheer scale of its exterior makes a lasting impact: its colossal tower is the largest Norman tower in the world, while the west front's soaring recessed arch - 65 feet high - is the only exterior arch in the country to boast such impressive proportions. In the nave, fourteen stout Norman pillars steal the show, topped by a fourteenth-century ribbed and vaulted ceiling, studded with gilded bosses (look for the musical angels). On the blue and scarlet choir roof the bosses include a ring of shining suns (emblem of the Yorkist cause), said to have been put there by Edward IV after the defeat of the Lancastrians at Tewkesbury in 1471, the last important battle of the Wars of the Roses. (The battlefield, known as Bloody Meadow, is off Lincoln Green Lane, southwest of the abbey.) The abbey's medieval tombs celebrate Tewkesbury's greatest patrons, the Fitzhamons, De Clares, Beauchamps and Despensers, who turned the building into something of a mausoleum for themselves. The Despensers have the best monuments, particularly Sir Edward, standard-bearer to the Black Prince, who died in 1375 and is shown as a kneeling figure on the roof of the Trinity Chapel to the right of the high altar: you can see it best from beside the Warwick Chantry Chapel in the north aisle. Nearby, in the ambulatory, the macabre so-called Wakeman Cenotaph , carved in the fifteenth century but of otherwise uncertain origin, represents a decaying corpse being consumed by snakes and other creatures.
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