Tewkesbury Abbey; Or, How To Save Your Local Abbey

Tewkesbury Abbey is pretty much intact. Only the Lady Hall was removed from the abbey church. The townspeople bought the abbey from Henry VIII to be their parish church, for the price of the bell and the roof lead. And so they have what must be one of the largest and most beautiful parish churches on the island, virtually a model Norman cathedral. Which prompts us to wonder why this sort of thing wasn't done more often. Part of the answer must be that abbeys mostly were located in very remote places. No townspeople. Another part may be that the monastical system was on its last legs and deteriorating already. The plagues had thinned out the population sufficiently for there to be ample employment and opportunity elsewhere. Tintern Abbey, we read, was down to its last six monks, there were no lay brothers to work the fields or repair the buildings, and they were selling off their gold and silver just to eat. Based on aggrandizement, cheap labor, etc., they were not particularly well-liked, particularly as the Reformation was now gathering steam. So Henry VIII and his government merely administered the coup de grace; with a tidy profit, no doubt. The abbots and abbesses and their colleagues, we have been told, were pensioned off. Fortunately for us, Tewkesbury Abbey survived.

The Keep Calm thing, BTW, has gone way too far

The abbey church, from the campground car park

Aerial view, with town and mighty Avon in the background

Nave view; a bit of work going on...but you still can admire
the giant Norman piers, thevaulting, the triforium, the teeniny
windows in the clerestory, and so on

Thus; and the vaulting has bosses that relate events in the life
of Jesus

A Gurney stove, how large buildings were heated in the 19th
century; Tewkesbury has two

The Pelican myth (look it up)

Vicki observed: if you're going to do graffiti, do it well...

Chancel, altar, etc.

East window

Organ

In the Chapel of the Holy Trinity, the Chantry of Lord Hugh Despenser (one of
the Black Prince's lieutenants at Poitiers), the first example of true fan vaulting,
so the sign said; I'll be looking for the sign that announces the first example of
false fan vaulting

View from the northwest

The abbey sits on a beautiful park campus, Tewkesbury
center, studded with what must be champion trees (so
many there is a separate pamphlet on them); here, one
of a couple of big redwoods

Tewkesbury

It was time to wash and thus time to find a campground with washing machines and a drier. We are members of the Caravan Club (the unfriendly club; formed from a group of retired drill sergeants), the largest of such UK organizations, and were pleased to find one of its better known sites in nearby Tewkesbury, maybe 20 miles from Gloucester, a place we wanted to visit and which had an abbey, to boot. FWIW, Tewkesbury is not in any of our guidebooks, yet is a beautiful and interesting place, evidently well-accustomed to tourism, though, I suspect, pretty strictly British tourism.

The Tewkesbury Abbey Caravan Club Park claims to be the best-sited in Britain:
the abbey is across the road and the town just beyond the trees on the right

After touring the abbey, we spent the rest of the day walking the beautiful little
town, filled with mostly 16th and 17th century houses and other buildings

Flowers everywhere, particularly roses; which reminds me that Tewkesbury was a
major battle in the War of the Roses

New variety to me, yellow surrounded by pink...

It's a beautiful little walking town, right on the mighty Avon

With an unusual number of antiques and collectables [sic] shoppes; is this the
proper British spelling, I wonder?

Every other building looking like it's going to fall over into
the street; but doing just fine, thank you, after 400 years;
someone at the TI told Vicki that even the ones that look
modern actually have false fronts and are just as old...

Every few buildings there's a covered alley
like this

Oh well, time to get back

After one more alley

Gloucester Cathedral: Extras

Family burial: note children at lower left and right

Window depicting the coronation of Edward II

Tomb of Edward II; a long story...he was
murdered, perhaps gruesomely, after abdicating,
by henchmen of his wife, the Queen, and Roger
Mortimer (who paid for his crime, gruesomely);
Gloucester was the only cathedral that would
accept Edward's body; later it became a major
pilgrimage site: the power of revisionist
historiography?

Baptismal font, 1190, in the Lady Hall

Interesting burial of Robert, Duke of Normandy, a major
benefactor of Gloucester, and eldest son of William the
Conqueror; William had interesting ideas about his sons
and succession, preferring his youngest, who became
Henry I; Henry had the middle brother mysteriously die in
New Forest and incarcerated Robert for 34 years in Cardiff
Castle; the pose, we were told, was that of a crusader,
always ready to spring into action to save Jerusalem or
plunder Constantinople or whatever

We seldom like contemporary sculpture, but did like this
Holy Family

Some of the better stained light on the floor we have seen

In the apse, some beautiful non-perpendicular
buttressing as well as a glimpse of the
Decorated vaulting there

And finally, that which is irresistible at
Gloucester, the fan vaulting in the cloister,
said to be its earliest example

More; it is largely decorative and not
structural, I understand

Closer up

While the organ was filling the cathedral
with glorious music inside, the great tower
bells peeled outside for more than an hour;
we sat and listened for quite a while

Last look at one of the great sights

Gloucester Cathedral: Basics

Gloucester Cathedral is famous for a number of reasons, its Perpendicular style (although everything else is there, too), its several important monuments and tombs, and particularly the fan vaulting in the cloister (it was originally an abbey church), the oldest fan vaulting in a country known for its fan vaulting. Churchill and the Beatles, I have read, were just nuts about fan vaulting. Also Shakespeare.

Southwest view; not known for its outside sculpture

Knave view; England was not subject to the
Council of Trent, thank you very much, and so
the screens remain in most of the cathedrals, as
here, augmented by the organ, to provide further
barrier between the merely faithful and the
priests and their mysterious activities within

Elevation; no galleries; note the huge piers,
Norman vaulting, etc.; as with all English
cathedrals, low ceiling and relatively few
windows; they were just not into the height
and light thing

Choir; so-so

West transept window; nor were they much
into the Christian education via windows thing

Altar and very large east window; the shadow
beyond it (what an image!) is that of the Lady
Hall

The organ; we got to the cathedral about 1:30 and our whole
visit was serenaded, inside, by a wonderful organ recital, the
best way to tour a cathedral

Gloucester

We took another rest day at Tintern Abbey, catching up on things and recovering from the previous day's hike. Sunday morning we crossed the Wye again and were back in England. Originally we had thought we'd spend a week or more in Wales, but when it came to it, we decided that most of the things that interested us were up in the north, and that we had covered them well enough in 2009. We drove on through the Forest of Dean (the Deanery, nyuk, nyuk), got to Gloucester in the late morning, found an empty parking lot near the train station, and decided to spend the day, a beautiful Sunday, walking the old city and touring the cathedral.

Sunday street scene in Gloucester; much of the downtown
is pedestrianized; like many English cities, Gloucester has
maintained its Roman street lay-out; the center of the city is
the Cross, where meet the four main streets, Northgate,
Eastgate, Southgate, and Westgate

The New Inn, built in 1455, remains one of the best examples
of a Medieval courtyard inn; it was here that Lady Jane Grey
learned that the deal was done, she would be the next Queen
of England 

We thought we might have lunch at the New Inn but opted
instead for the similarly old Fountain

Pub grub: about half way through this meal
I remembered to take a photo: it was the largest
slab of fish I've ever been served (halibut), and
Vicki's ribs were similarly proportioned; Old
Butcombe and the week-long Ledbury Poetry
Festival guide for company

Old and really old: a shop building and the
cathedral towers beyond

One of Glouceter's other attractions is the Blackfriars Abbey,
one of the few abbeys in the UK not dismantled; maintained
now by English Heritage, mostly as a party house and
meeting center, I think; here we are in the courtyard

And here inside the church, looking at a
revealing cut-away: the abbey survived because
the mayor of Gloucester bought it directly after
the Dissolution, and converted it into his great
house; it has had many other uses in the
centuries since; the blocks have been cut away
to reveal some of the old church architecture

Vicki in the scriptorium, where the monks copied, and
re-copied, and illuminated, etc., the manuscripts; each of the
columns along the walls partitioned a monk's carrel; one
of the oldest still-existing library buildings in the UK, if not
Europe

Scissors vaulting in the scriptorium; note the large pegs where
the pieces are joined

Monk-ly graffiti? porn?

Really old door lintel

Not the baker's; Mr. Baker was apparently the town watchmaker,
jeweller, and optician; we didn't get to see figures doing their
things, but it must (have been) be a sight

Offa's Dyke

Offa's Dyke is a 130-mile ditch and rampart that runs, more or less, from the River Dee to the River Wye, roughly drawing a line between Mercia (now England) and Powys (now Wales). The current border actually follows it in some places. There is very scant historical or other documentation about it. According to tradition, it was built by Offa, king of Mercia, in the 8th century. It is not completely continuous, skipping over or around natural barriers. It is thought to be a defensive structure built by the Mercians, since the rampart is always on the Mercian side and natural barriers, e.g., hills, always favor the defenders to the east. Some scholars apparently think it goes back to Roman times; others think it was built in sections over a number of centuries. Whoever is right, it is still there and something any armchair archaeologist will want to see if passing (very) nearby. Besides, it is just beyond the Devil's Pulpit, a famous Tintern Abby overlook. And we wanted a little exercise as well as communion with Nature and the spirits of Bill and Dottie.

View of Tintern Abbey from the ridge; you can see our
camper, middle/right...

Devil's Pulpit view of the abbey; it was from the pulpit that
the devil enticed monks from the abbey...

Eureka! We are on the Offa's Dyke Path, one of the UK's
great walks

So there it is; you have to use your imagination as it's become
a bit overgrown in these 1200 years

Ditto

Age-old war between tree and boulder: tree
wins again

Nice hike, nice trail, nice day, perhaps our
first day of summer here