Evesham

The Tower That Survived

Abbot Lichfield's Bell Tower rises 110 feet above Abbey Park, and it is very nearly all that survives of Evesham Abbey. The abbey was reputedly the third largest in England before 1540, when it was plundered and razed to the ground; the tower Clement Lichfield had put up in the 1520s and 30s was left standing, and now it presides over a stretch of riverside parkland where the rest of the abbey used to be.

Behind it is a churchyard doing double duty. Two parish churches share it — All Saints, twelfth century and Grade I listed, with a chantry chapel tied to Abbot Lichfield, and St Lawrence's, also twelfth century, declared redundant in 1977 and now preserved rather than used. Two churches and a bell tower in one abbey churchyard is an unusual arrangement, and you can walk between all three in a couple of minutes.

The River, Green Hill and the Vale

The town sits on a horseshoe of land almost entirely wrapped by a meander of the River Avon, with Bengeworth grown up on the far bank. You can cross the water on the Hampton Ferry, a passenger boat pulled across on a rope, which drops you onto the footpaths of the Vale of Evesham. The paths around Abbey Park and the Workman Gardens follow the river; north of the town, the Battle of Evesham trail climbs Green Hill to Battle Well and the Simon de Montfort memorial.

That is the seasoning behind the town. The Vale itself is the reason to come. This is some of the most fertile ground in England, the Avon flood plain, and it has grown fruit and vegetables commercially for centuries under a leasehold tenure peculiar to the area, the Evesham Custom, that still governs market garden tenancies. Asparagus is the local crop — Evesham asparagus — celebrated each spring at the British Asparagus Festival, running roughly from St George's Day to the summer solstice.

The Fleece Inn and the Asparagus Auction

The festival's asparagus auction is held three miles east at Bretforton, in the courtyard of the Fleece Inn. The Fleece is a medieval half-timbered longhouse of around six hundred years, owned by the National Trust since Lola Taplin, its last private owner, left it to them in 1977 after generations of her family had run it. Inside are low beams and three fires; outside is a courtyard and a set of heated horse boxes standing among apple trees. It took the Great British Pub Awards' Country Pub of the Year and CAMRA's County Pub of the Year in 2025, and asparagus gets its own menu section in season.

Rainy-Day Attractions

There is more for a wet afternoon than the weather deserves. The Evesham Vale Light Railway runs miniature steam and diesel trains at The Valley on the edge of town; the Regal is an Art Deco cinema of 1932, reopened in 2009; the Almonry, a fourteenth-century half-timbered building that once served the abbey, is now the museum and tourist office, with a de Montfort memorial garden.

Rail Connections, Eof and Asum

Trains run roughly hourly on the Cotswold Line to Worcester and to London Paddington. The town keeps a statue of Eof, the swineherd whose vision of the Virgin Mary is said to have started the abbey, and whose name it still carries. Locals call the place Asum.