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.