The Battle of Evesham

Steve's from a lovely little town called Evesham in Worcestershire (points if you know how to say that correctly), which is near the middle of the country in the aptly named Midlands.  Like most places, it's got its history, which is a little bit cooler than Sonoma's history of the Bear Flag Revolt where someone's foot was shot in an otherwise bloodless raid of the house of the Spanish governor and then the entire rebellion was made moot when the US took over California not too long after.  But we did keep the flag!

In Evesham, they actually had a battle, aptly called "The Battle of Evesham" on August 4 of 1265.  (Did you get that?  TWELVE 65.  Not a mistype.)  A year earlier the rebels, led by the Earl of Leicester Simon de Montford, had captured King Henry III and Prince Edward and ruled in their stead for a year.  But Prince Edward escaped and gathered a huge army to attack the rebels on that fateful night.

Quite frankly, the rebels were massacred.  Simon de Montford was pulled off his horse and hacked to pieces.  Thousands were chased into the streets of Evesham and slaughtered, leaving blood on the stones of the road.  I had to look down at my feet then and shiver, wondering how many of the old stones there were originally from that time period.  But doesn't that story sound just like the makings of a movie?  It's no wonder there are so many old knight stories out there.

A few kings later, the Abbey that had sheltered the rebels and where the bits of Simon de Montford were buried was ordered to be torn down by Henry VIII's dissolution of the monasteries.  Basically, it was the King naming himself head of all the churches so he could get a divorce.  Reality TV has nothing on this.  Nevertheless, the abbey was torn down and the stone it was made of sold off.  But the church and bell tower remain standing from those times.


Regardless of all that blood, it's a lovely place to explore.  The river Avon flows through the town and there are swans everywhere along with bridges and parks.  There's also a statue depicting the name of the town, which translates in Old English to "Home of Eof" who was a shepherd that saw and spoke with the Virgin Mary.