Tewkesbury Abbey has been called "the Westminster Abbey of the feudal baronage," and with good reason: it holds more medieval noble tombs than anywhere outside London's own abbey. That reputation nearly ended in the 1530s, when Henry VIII's officials valued the building's lead roof and bells at a mere four hundred and fifty three pounds and prepared to strip it. Tewkesbury's townspeople simply bought the whole church back from the Crown, saving it wholesale, a piece of civic stubbornness rare in Reformation England.

The Normans completed the abbey in 1121, and its tower, forty five metres high, remains the largest Romanesque example in the country. Beneath it lie victims of the Wars of the Roses, including George, Duke of Clarence, reputedly drowned in a butt of Malmsey wine after the Battle of Tewkesbury in 1471.

VoiceMap's "Tewkesbury Tales" tour traces that battle's aftermath through the abbey and into the town's timber framed streets, following the Lancastrian dead from the battlefield to their final resting place.