For more than a hundred years after the destruction of the noble pile the site was used as a stone quarry, and fragments may be found in almost all the older houses in the town, and in many farm buildings in the neighbourhood. There is hardly an old garden near that has not some carved stones of curious shape recognisable by the antiquary as having once formed part of a shaft, a window, or an archway of the proud Abbey. Of these scattered fragments the most important is the lectern of alabaster, Romanesque in style, now, after long misuse and neglect serving its original purpose in the church of Saint Egwin at Norton, a village lying nearly three miles to the north of the town. A description of this relic will be found in the last section of this work.
The local tradition of the splendour of the Monastery is no doubt handed down to us by Thomas Habington, the antiquary, who visited the town in 1640. "There was not to be found," he writes, with pardonable exaggeration, "out of Oxford or Cambridge, so great an assemblage of religious buildings in the kingdom"!
CHAPTER V
THE PARISH CHURCHES
The two parish churches, placed together in one yard, make with the bell tower an unusually striking group. What then would be the feelings aroused in the spectator were the great church, a cathedral in magnitude and splendour, still visible, rising majestically above roofs and spires. To us the Abbey which is gone can do no more than add solemnity to the scene which once it graced. It matters little by which entrance we approach the churchyard, for from every side the buildings group harmoniously; each of the steeples acting as it were as a foil to the other: and both the spires unite in adding dignity to the bell tower. The churchyard in Norman times would seem to have been part of the Abbey precincts, as it is enclosed within Abbot Reginald's wall already described, and a second wall, part of which is still standing, divided it from the Monastery and the monastic grounds.
The Church of All Saints seems to have served, from very early times, as the parish church. As we examine it we read, as in an ancient and partly illegible manuscript, its long story. The restorer, more ruthless than Age or Time, has, with the best intentions, laid his heavy hand upon it, and obliterated much of its character and history; but enough remains to interest us, though pleasure is now mingled with much vain regret. In the simple Norman arch through which we pass as we enter the nave, and perhaps the western wall with the small round-headed windows, we find the earliest records. The slight tower with its sharply-pointed windows and delicate spire was added, probably supplanting an earlier and simple porch, in the time of the Edwards. The arches and northern clerestory of the nave belong to a rather later period when the church was found too narrow for the increasing population; while the arches on the southern side with no clerestory above, are probably later still. The choir and north wall of the nave are the work of the restorer, and tell us nothing but a tale of culpable neglect and mistaken zeal! The head of the north door of the chancel is, however, a relic of the original building, and this should be carefully examined. It is beautifully cut with double rows of cusps, and is of fourteenth century workmanship. The latest Gothic additions are the work of Clement Lichfield. To this Abbot we owe the outer porch so deeply panelled, with its two entrance doorways, its pierced battlements, and finely carved timber roof; to him also do we breathe our thanks as we stand looking up at the lovely vaulting of the Lichfield Chapel built by him in his younger days when Prior of the Monastery. Here was Lichfield buried, and beneath the floor his body lies; formerly a memorial brass engraved with effigy and inscription marked the spot, but this has long since disappeared. The inscription, however, can be read on a tablet lately erected by pious hands to perpetuate his memory. Over the entrance we may still see the initials of the builder carved upon an ornamental shield. The windows are now filled with modern glass, not unworthily telling the oft-repeated story of the "vanished Abbey." In the upper lights are represented figures of the Virgin Mary, and of Eoves with his swine. The shields on either side of the former figure bear the lily and the rose; to the left of Eoves are the arms of the Borough of Evesham, and on the right those attributed to the ancient Earls of Mercia. The figures below show Saint Egwin, with the arms of the See of Worcester to the left, those of the Monastery to the right; and Abbot Lichfield, with his own arms (Lichfield alias Wych) on the left, and those of the Rev. F.W. Holland, to whose memory the windows were glazed, oh the right. In the west window of the chapel is Simon de Montfort, Earl of Leicester, with the arms of de Montfort on the left, and those of James the First, who granted the Borough its charter, on the right. Above him is his opponent and conqueror, Prince Edward; to the left his own arms as eldest son of the monarch, and to the right the traditional arms of Edward the Confessor; who according to the Abbey Chronicles first granted the town a market and the right of levying tolls. In one of the carved panels below these windows is a variation of the coat-of-arms of the Monastery.
As we leave the church porch we shall notice the black and white house adjoining Abbot Reginald's gateway on the right. This is now a private house, but was until lately the Vicarage. The lower rooms have been made to project to the level of the first floor, and the picturesqueness given by an overhanging storey has thus been lost. In one of these rooms is a large fifteenth-century fireplace of stone.