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.

The Church of Saint Lawrence has little to say to us of its history.  Though an old foundation the irregular western tower is the earliest part now standing, and this is not older than the fourteenth or fifteenth century; the rest of the church was built in Lichfield’s time, but after having lain in ruins for many years it underwent a complete restoration towards the middle of last century, with the result that much of the Gothic character is lost.  The general plan of the church with its panelled arcade and open clerestory is original, but the northern side is modern, and compared with the old work hard and lacking in feeling.  The east window and the chapel now used as the baptistery are both fine examples of perpendicular architecture and worthy of careful study.  The carved detail round the east window with its playful treatment of flying buttresses, battlements, and pinnacles is charming