Tewkesbury Abbey

Stand still for a moment and look up. A square Norman tower rises above you, pale gold stone under a wide Gloucestershire sky. Rooks call from the trees around the churchyard. Somewhere close by, two rivers meet, and on a damp morning you can almost smell the water in the air. This is Tewkesbury Abbey, and it has watched over this small market town for more than nine hundred years.

The story begins in the early twelfth century. A Norman lord named Robert Fitzhamon, a companion of the Conqueror's sons, founded a great Benedictine monastery here. The Benedictines were monks who lived by a strict daily rule of prayer, work and study. Building began soon after 1100, and the church was consecrated in 1121. Much of what you see today is still that original Norman work, which makes this one of the finest Romanesque churches in England. Romanesque simply means the heavy, round-arched style that came before Gothic.

Now turn to the tower again. It is often described as the largest surviving Norman crossing tower anywhere in the world. A crossing tower sits where the long nave meets the arms of the church, so every stone of it rests on four great piers inside. Look closely at the upper stages. Rows of round arches and carved patterns wrap around it like decorative bands. For a building of this age, it is remarkably complete.

If you walk to the west end, you will meet the abbey's other great surprise. The west front is almost entirely one enormous recessed arch, layer upon layer of rounded mouldings stepping back into the wall. Few Norman churches have anything like it. The window inside the arch is much later. The original front suffered damage over the centuries, and the glass you see now is a far younger addition set into that ancient frame.

Step inside, and the nave opens out ahead of you. Two lines of massive round columns march towards the east. They are unusually tall and unusually thick, and they give the space a calm, almost fortress-like strength. Run your eyes up one of them. These columns were raised by hand, stone by stone, by masons who had no cranes and no steel. Much of the stone is local limestone, though tradition holds that some was shipped by river from Normandy.

Now look up at the ceiling of the nave. The Norman roof was replaced in the fourteenth century with a stone vault, a ribbed ceiling of carved arches. Where the ribs meet, you will see carved bosses, small decorated knots of stone. That later rebuilding was paid for largely by two powerful families, the de Clares and the Despensers. Their wealth and ambition shaped the eastern half of this church more than anyone else.

Walk on towards the choir, the area around the high altar. Above you, the stained glass in the tall upper windows dates mostly from the fourteenth century. Look for the figures of knights in armour, standing in bright reds, blues and golds. They represent the lords connected to this abbey. It is rare medieval glass, and it has survived wars, reformations and centuries of weather. On a bright day, coloured light falls across the stone floor below.

Then comes the darkest chapter. On 4 May 1471, during the Wars of the Roses, a fierce battle was fought just south of the town. The Wars of the Roses were a long struggle for the English crown between the houses of York and Lancaster. The Yorkists won decisively. Defeated Lancastrian soldiers fled into the abbey, hoping for sanctuary. Yorkist troops followed them inside, and blood was spilled in the church itself.

After that violence, the abbey had to be cleansed and reconsecrated before worship could continue. Young Edward, Prince of Wales, the Lancastrian heir, died in or after the battle. He was buried here, and a brass plate in the floor beneath the tower marks the spot. Look up at the choir vault, too. You will see carved golden suns. This sun in splendour was a Yorkist badge, placed here by the victors after the battle.

The battle left one more trace. In the sacristy, the room where priests prepared for services, there is an old door lined with metal plates. Local tradition says these plates are armour taken from soldiers who fell in 1471. Whether that is true is hard to prove, but the story has been told here for generations. Nearby, behind the high altar, lies a vault where George, Duke of Clarence, is buried. Legend says he was drowned in a barrel of sweet wine.

Around the choir you will find a ring of medieval tombs and chantry chapels. A chantry was a small chapel where priests sang prayers for the dead. On top of one, a stone knight kneels, facing the altar in eternal prayer. Look also for the Wakeman cenotaph, a memorial carved with a decaying corpse. Small creatures crawl over the body — a snail, a frog, a mouse. It was a stark medieval reminder that every life ends.

So how did this church survive the Dissolution of the Monasteries, when King Henry the Eighth closed England's abbeys in the sixteenth century? Many great monastic churches were stripped and pulled down. Here, the townspeople acted. They bought the church from the Crown for 453 pounds, a huge sum for a small town, so they could keep it as their parish church. Most of the monastery buildings were lost, but the church stood. Later, a Victorian restoration here angered the designer William Morris so much that it helped push him to found a society for protecting old buildings.

Before you leave, walk out into the churchyard and look back. Notice how the abbey sits on slightly raised ground, close to the Severn and the Avon. In the great floods of 2007, photographs showed the abbey surrounded by water like an island. The medieval builders seem to have chosen their spot with care. Listen to the bells, the traffic on Church Street, the rooks again in the trees. Then take one last look at that golden tower, still standing where Fitzhamon's masons set it, nine centuries ago.