Evesham.
THE legendary story of Evesham’s origin takes us back to the year 701,
when one of the Bishop of Worcester’s swineherds, seeking a strayed sow,
penetrated the forest that then covered this site, and here found his sow
and also a ruined chapel, relic of an ancient and forgotten church. A
modern discoverer of ruins would find shattered walls and nothing else,
but Eof, the swineherd, beheld a vision of the Virgin and attendant
saints singing there. Instead of worshipping, he ran, almost scared out
his life, and only ventured back under the protection of Bishop Ecgwin
himself, who saw the same wonderful sight and heard the singing. There
could be but one outcome of this: the founding of a religious house upon
the spot; and thus arose the great Benedictine monastery of Eof’s-hamme.
Even in those times there would seem to have been people who could not
digest this story, as the Bishop soon found, and he seems to have been so
stricken by the tales told of him that he considered nothing less than a
pilgrimage to Rome would avail him much. His preparations for departing
were peculiar. He chained his legs together and having locked the chain,
threw the key into the river. Arrived at Rome in spite of this amazing
difficulty (we are not told how he got there!), a salmon bought for him
proved to contain, when cut open, the key to unlock his fetters. The
salmon had swallowed it in the Avon and had swum across seas! This
cumulative outrage upon common sense then proceeds to tell us how the
bells of Rome rang of themselves, and how impressed was the Pope.
Nothing afterwards ever astonished him: his capacity for wonder was
filled to the brim. These unparalleled occurrences seemed to this
credulous and doddering old pontiff so strong a proof of Ecgwin’s honesty
that he forthwith conferred upon his monastery not only many valuable
privileges, but freed it from the authority of Worcester. And Ecgwin,
third Bishop of Worcester, resigned the greater post for the lesser, and
became first Abbot of Evesham. There appears to have been an early doubt
as to what the name was to be, for it is once referred to as
“Ecguineshamme”; but the legendary herdsman Eof easily won the honour,
and although Ecgwin was created a saint after his death, the place never
acquired his name and thus we have “Evesham” instead of “Exham,” as the
place would probably otherwise have been called.
On this foundation of incredible story the future wealth and power of the
great Abbey of Evesham was laid. Its Abbots never grew ashamed of the
stupid lies, and to the last sealed their deeds and documents with seals
bearing representations of Ecgwin’s unlocked fetters and other incidents
of his fantastic invention. In spite of fire, invasion and even early
confiscation of some of its property, Evesham Abbey grew wealthier and
more influential. Its Abbots were of those great mitred Abbots who sat
in Parliament, prone to anger and violence on occasion; and not
infrequently they were of the type of Abbot Roger, who in the thirteenth
century expended the substance of the monastery on riotous living and
kept his seventy monks and sixty servants so ill-clothed and fed that
they went in rags and even starved. No bite nor sup for them; and when
they crawled into the Abbey, the leaky roof poured water on them. Some
died of starvation. It would take long to tell in full the story of the
many years in which this strange Abbot ruled.
But the monastery and its great Abbey church easily survived this
miserable time, and fresh architectural glories were added. Even at the
last, when the suppression of the great religious houses under Henry the
Eighth was impending, more building was in progress. Abbot Lichfield,
the last of the long line, then ruled, and was building the Bell Tower,
which almost alone remains of the Abbey church. That church, 350 feet in
length, and its many chapels and chantries, filled with the tombs of
generations of benefactors who had hoped by their gifts to be prayed for
“for ever,” was destroyed in almost the completest manner. Even Thomas
Cromwell, the most zealous of Henry the Eighth’s coadjutors, was
impressed with the beauty of this great mass of buildings; but all
efforts to avert the destruction, and to put them to some collegiate use,
failed. Not even the great Abbey of Bury St. Edmunds disappeared quite
so completely as this of Evesham. Leland, writing in 1540, six years
later, remarked, with astonishment: “Gone, a mere heap of ruins.”
The position of the town upon the meadow-lands by the Avon is enshrined
in the second half of the place-name, which in this case is not the more
common “ham,” indicating a “home,” or settlement, but “hamme,” a
waterside meadow. You do not see the justness of this until the river
has been crossed by the fine modern bridge, and the town viewed from
Bengeworth, on the other side of Avon. Thence those meadows are seen,
with the Abbey Bell Tower, and the towers and spires of the churches of
St. Lawrence and All Saints, making an unusual grouping, with a certain
grandeur in their contrasting dispositions. We may readily admit that
the famous Bell Tower is the finest architectural work in Evesham,
because the admission will make it the easier to criticise its great
defect, its comparative dwarfness. Built in 1533 by Abbot Lichfield, it
was the last work of the Gothic era at Evesham, and is perhaps one of the
most striking examples of the Perpendicular period:
[Picture: Bell Tower, Evesham]
embodying the features of the style in the highest degree, in the long
lateral panellings wholly covering its surface. It is the more
noticeable because of its solitary position. But to lavish upon it the
unqualified praise that is commonly given is alike uncritical of its own
defect of insufficient height, and shows an ignorance or forgetfulness of
the grander proportions of the central tower of Gloucester Cathedral,
very closely resembling it in style, or of the unmatched towers of the
Somersetshire churches, many of which are not only loftier, and with far
better and varied details, but have also that sense of height which is
rather painfully lacking here.
The entrance from the Market Place to what were once the Abbey precincts,
where the churches of St. Lawrence and All Saints stand closely
neighbouring one another, in one churchyard, is by the so-called Norman
Gateway. There is not much left of the Norman work, the upper part being
a half-timber building, apparently of the fifteenth century. The view
into this corner from the Market Place is very picturesque, but it was
better before the adjoining public library was built, a few years ago.
Not only were some charmingly old-world houses destroyed to make way for
it, but it is itself a building lamentably out of character with its
surroundings. The church of St. Lawrence, very late in style and
remarkable for the originality of its tower and spire, has some delicate
and elaborate work; and in that of All Saints is the richly-panelled and
fan-vaulted chantry built by Clement Lichfield, the last Abbot of
Evesham, who lies here.
A relic of the Abbey of a more domestic character is seen in the lovely
little building on Abbey Green called the Almonry. It was formerly the
place where the almoners distributed their doles, and is of all periods
from Early English to Perpendicular, its materials ranging from stone to
timber, brick and plaster. Many generations have had something to say in
the building of it, and the present has at the moment of writing these
lines said yet another word, stripping off the plaster with which the
front had been covered for some two centuries. The sturdy oak timbering
is now uncovered, and is a revelation to many of unsuspected beauty. An
ancient stone lantern is inside the building, which is now occupied as
the “Rudge Estate Office.” Perhaps, now that these new and better ways
with old buildings are revealing long-forgotten craftsmanship, attention
will be turned to the ancient Booth Hall, or market-house, still standing
in the Market Place, covered in like manner with plaster.
[Picture: The Almonry, Evesham]
It would not be well to leave Evesham without referring to the greatest
event in its history, the fierce battle fought here August 4th, 1265, at
Greenhill, on the road to Worcester. Simon de Montfort, Earl of
Leicester, in arms against Henry the Third, and with the King himself a
prisoner in his hands, lay at Evesham the night before with his army. De
Montfort and his men were at mass early the next morning and then marched
out to meet an enemy who outnumbered them and had cut off every avenue of
escape. They were fighting for the popular cause, and De Montfort,
Frenchman though he might be, was the chosen champion of English
liberties. Privilege and the reactionaries had their way that day, for
Prince Edward and his numerically superior and encircling army cut down
De Montfort and his men in swathes. None asked or gave quarter on that
fatal day. A large number hewed their way through and fled to the Castle
of Kenilworth, but the old Simon and his son Henry were slain. The King
himself was almost slain by mistake. The sculptured base of an obelisk
on the site of the battle at Abbey Manor, Greenhill, portrays this
incident, with the King’s words, “I am Henry of Winchester, your King.
Do not kill me.”
“It is God’s grace!” exclaimed the dying De Montfort. The exultant enemy
did not scruple to mutilate his body and to send portions of it about the
country.
“Such,” says Robert of Gloucester,
“was the murder of Evesham, for battle none it was,
And therewith Jesus Christ ill pleased was,
As he showed by tokens grisly and good.”
In spite of the Ban of Kenilworth, which forbade the people to regard
Simon de Montfort as a saint, and forbade them to pay reverence to his
memory, the resting-place of what remains of him could be collected was
before the High Altar of the Abbey Church, and there thousands prayed and
miracles were performed. For generations his shrine was the best asset
of the church and contributed largely to its rebuilding.
The next important warlike incident at Evesham was also the last; the
assault and capture of the town in May 1645 by Massey, the Parliamentary
Governor of Gloucester, in spite of a gallant defence by Colonel Legge
and his small garrison of 700 men. It was a three-to-one business, for
Massey had 2000 men at his disposal. Since then the town has had peace
to follow that fruit-farming and market-gardening career which it has
pursued with ever-increasing success for two centuries. There are not
many tree- and bush-fruits uncultivated in the Vale of Evesham, whose
deep rich soil yields abundantly to the growers’ efforts, but the plum is
the speciality of this Vale. It is not like the fabled Arthurian Vale of
Avalon, “where comes not hail nor frost”; for indeed the belated frosts
of spring are the bugbear of the Evesham fruit-farmer, and he has been
driven in self-defence of late years, to combat those nipping
temperatures by burning nightly “smudges” of heavy oil, to take the sting
out of the airs that would otherwise congeal his fruit-buds at the time
of their setting, and thus ruin his prospect of a crop. The plum—and
especially the yellow “egg plum”—is the Evesham speciality, and in April
its blossom fills the Vale like snow. But there are comparatively few
strangers who see that wonderful spectacle. If the close of April be
kind, you may see it and rejoice, but if the month be going out in rain
and wind, then it is better to be at home than on Cotswold or in this
sink of alluvial earth below those hills. I was caught in April showers
at Evesham, on a day that was “arl a-collied like,” as they say in these
parts, meaning gloomy and overcast; and then “the dag came arn, an’ then
et mizzled, an’ grew worser ’n worser, until et poured suthin tar’ble.”
And there I stood long in one entry off the High Street until I was tired
of it, and then in another, and thus having done Evesham by double entry,
ended the unprofitable day by staying the night, while the wind raged,
and it hailed and rained and snowed by turns and simultaneously. But the
next morning was a glorious one, although the roads were full of puddles
and strewn with plum-blossom ravaged from the orchards by those nocturnal
blasts.
[Picture: Abbey Gateway, Evesham]
One need not be long at Evesham to note the extraordinary number of
fruit-growers and market-gardeners hereabouts, as shown by the many
wagons, or floats, on their way to or from the railway station with
baskets and hampers of apples, pears, plums, gooseberries, currants,
tomatoes, or asparagus; while to travel south of the town, through the
favoured Vale, by any road you please, is to see that these are highly
specialised cultivations that give as distinct a character to this
landscape as do the hop-gardens or the cherry-orchards of Kent.
Leaving Evesham, it will be noticed how very much after the style at
Stratford the Avon has been artificially widened and made to wear an
almost lakelike effect, with a kind of everyday gala appearance. Here
are trim grassy edges and public gardens; and boats and punts to be had
for the hiring: a tamed and curbed Avon, like the Round Pond or the
Serpentine in Kensington Gardens.