Tewkesbury Abbey

of themselves and of the Abbey Gules, a cross raguly or. Tewkesbury Abbey Founders Book, folio 8 verso, Bodleian Library, Oxford]] The Chronicle of Tewkesbury records that the first Christian worship was brought to the area by Theoc, a missionary from Northumbria, who built his cell in the mid-7th century near a gravel spit where the Severn and Avon rivers join. The cell was succeeded by a monastery in 715, but nothing remaining of it has been identified. In the 10th century the religious foundation at Tewkesbury became a priory subordinate to the Benedictine Cranborne Abbey in Dorset. In 1087, William the Conqueror gave the manor of Tewkesbury to his cousin, Robert Fitzhamon, who, with…

The church itself is one of the finest Norman buildings in England. Its massive crossing tower is noted in Pevsner's Buildings of England to be "probably the largest and finest Romanesque example in England". Fourteen of England's cathedrals are of smaller dimensions, while only Westminster Abbey contains more medieval church monuments. <gallery> File:Southwest face, Tewkesbury Abbey - geograph.org.uk - 1037447.jpg|The tall Norman arch of the facade is unique in England File:Tewkesbury abbey 04.JPG|The nave of Tewkesbury Abbey File:Tewkesbury Abbey Lord Ismay Garter Banner 01.JPG|Garter banner of the late Hastings Ismay, 1st Baron Ismay in Tewkesbury Abbey </gallery>