Woolly says – I was looking forward to getting off the site and heading out for the day in the town of Tewkesbury, a medieval market town in the north of Gloucestershire. Standing at the meeting point of the River Severn and the River Avon, it was once an important trading point. The name Tewkesbury is thought to come from Theoc, the name of a Saxon who founded a hermitage there in the 7th century, and in the Old English language was called Theocsbury, before taking its more modern name.

Alfie the Dog was obviously excited to be out and about if his barking frenzy in the car park was anything to go by and once Jo had attached his lead he headed straight into the grounds of the Abbey.

The Abbey Church of St Mary the Virgin, Tewkesbury, commonly known as Tewkesbury Abbey, is a former Benedictine monastery and is considered to be one of the finest examples of Norman architecture in Britain and has the largest Romanesque crossing tower in Europe. At first sight it actually looked quite small until we rounded the building and realised that there was a lot more to see.

Tewkesbury had been a centre for worship since the 7th century with a priory being established there in the 10th century. The present building was started in the early 12th century and was unsuccessfully used as a sanctuary in the Wars of the Roses. After the Dissolution of the Monasteries, Tewkesbury Abbey became the parish church for the town. As the human took snap after snap, I was eager to get inside to see how big it really was.

Arriving at the entrance our way was blocked by a lady in clerical robes who asked if we were there for the celebration service, I asked how long the service would last for and having been told that it would be at least an hour and a half, I thanked her and dragged to the two boys away as I was pretty sure that neither of them would sit still for that length of time let alone be quiet.

Woolly says – She had a point as I find it difficult to sit still for 3 seconds unless food is involved which I was pretty sure wasn’t the case. It wasn’t a problem we would do the other things I had looked up and then head back. With this plan in mind, we crossed the high street and headed down aptly named Mill Lane towards the mill.

Abbey Mill, also known as Fletcher’s Mill, for a former owner named Abel Fletcher, a Quaker who was the inspiration for the miller in Dinah Craik’s popular novel, ‘John Halifax – Gentleman’, published in 1856.

There has been a mill here since 1190, when the monks of the Abbey had a channel dug from the River Avon to power a mill to grind grain. The channel is known as Mill Avon, and extends from the Avon to the Severn at the southern edge of Tewkesbury. The 12th century mill was rebuilt in 1793 with 4 wheels. It remained in operation until 1920, but could not compete with the larger and more modern Healing’s Flour Mill, further north along the channel and shut up shop.

The building was nice enough but having walked round the area twice I realised that we couldn’t access a viewing point of the wheel as workmen had fenced the best spot off. Wondering if I could sneak through my carer came up with a slightly better plan and suggested we head into Victoria Gardens and see if we could catch a glimpse.

The gardens were well looked after with some lovely planting but having walked right the way round we realised that we still couldn’t see the wheel and had to be satisfied with watching the weir instead.

We set off to see what the town had to offer which was quite a lot in the way of old buildings, alleys and points of interest along the way.

The John Moore Museum had a most impressive frontage in a row of historic timber-framed buildings, established in 1980 in memory of the writer and naturalist, John Moore sadly it wasn’t on our list for the day as it wasn’t Alfie friendly. Before I even had time to show any regret for this Jo stopped in her tracks and pointed upwards to a roundhead helmet suspended outside another one of the towns black and white trail, unusual to say the least.

What was even stranger were the number of banners along the buildings, they were everywhere. Before I could even think of looking in my Mammoth Book of Everything as to what they might be about, the human paused and pointed up at one saying ‘that’s the Earl of Powys’s banner’ I peered up wondering how on earth she knew that just as I realised that she was reading from a small piece of paper stuck on one of the buildings windows.

Each building that sported one of the banners had the information to read, it also solved the mystery of what all the banners were about.

Woolly says – Having read on I realised that the town was incredibly proud of its history during the Battle of Tewkesbury, which took place on 4th May 1471 and was one of the decisive battles in the Wars of the Roses, the display of historically accurate banners represented each of the families that had fought in the battle which made for a wonderful memorial to them.

Passing the war memorial which served as a roundabout I started to focus my attention on the alleys, Hughes Alley was where Joe Hughes had once sold all things dairy, Fletchers Alley would seem logically to be the place where the fletchers would have made their arrows,

The town hall was open for business supporting the RNLI but rather than go in and have a look round at its modern interior the two legged one amongst us decided that it was time for lunch and who was I to argue over that.

Lunch was not a success and a certain person actually complained about their food which to be fair is very unusual but apparently a mushroom pie with the chewiest mushrooms ever to grace a plate was not acceptable. My tummy was full and it was finally time to see inside the Abbey.

It was impressive, with its 14 gigantic Norman columns and the vaulted ceiling we stood for quite a while just admiring the roof space. I tried to count the 15 roof bosses but being so high up it was impossible to see them properly.

The floors were a sea of memorial plagues which we walked over to view the many tombs and chantry’s that were incredible pieces of work. One tomb was quite disturbing and looked at though the person had been starved to death.

Three seats known as misericords – carved wooden resting ledges – had what appeared to be ducks carved into them and led us towards the Quire.

The ceiling was amazing with the emblem of the House of York in its red and blues.

Whilst the High Altar made out of Purbeck marble had been hidden during the time of Cromwell which must have taken a bit of shifting given its size.

Three incredibly large figures had been made recently to celebrate the Battle of Tewkesbury and although gigantic next to us they seemed small in comparison to the building they were in.

Stained glass windows featured some beautiful work but my favourite was the much newer additions in 2002 designed and made by Tom Denny to mark the 900^th anniversary of the Abbey.

Having exhausted the interior, we headed back outside and set off round the exterior, it’s rear seemed to be a bit of a mismatch of renovations with some of the brickwork looking as though it had been cleaned very recently.

Arriving back at the car park I felt that Tewkesbury had offered us a lot to see and had been well worth the visit, well except for the mushroom pie which will remain forever on Jo’s list of things not to be eaten without first checking if the mushrooms had collected their pension before being added to the mix.