A new find and a pleasant surprise lies on the Cotswold Way. This fine little Norman Church and tranquil abbey ruins.
We were lucky to find it open and had ourselves a look around. Services are still celebrated here around once per month.
The church – which predates the abbey by about a century – houses some of its original tiles and medieval stained glass. I’s worth a look for its 800-year-old baptismal font and faded but evocative murals. Check out the wooden screen added long after the original construction – notice how the arch had to be cut away in order for the screen to fit.
There’s also an adjacent museum to the abbey across the road displaying the abbey’s surviving artifacts. While little remains of the abbey, just being here was a moving experience!
Richard, Earl of Cornwall (and younger brother of King Henry III) founded the abbey after surviving a shipwreck. His son Edmund turned it in to a pilgrimage site after buying a vial of holy blood and bringing the relic to Hailes around 1270. Because of Henry VIII’s dissolution of monasteries in the 16th century, not much remains of the abbey today.
Here are some pictures we captured as well:
