Tewkesbury, town (parish), Tewkesbury borough (district), administrative and historic county of Gloucestershire, southwest-central England. It is situated at the confluence of the Rivers Severn and Avon (Upper, or Warwickshire, Avon). The town is the administrative center for the borough.

A small Benedictine abbey was founded in 715 on the site of the present Abbey Church of St. Mary’s. The later medieval abbey was consecrated in 1123 and rebuilt after a fire in 1178; considerable additions were made in the 15th century. At the time of the dissolution of the monasteries (1536–39), the choir, transepts, and square Norman tower of the abbey were purchased by the townsfolk, but much of the remainder of the building was destroyed.

The feudal earls of Gloucester made Tewkesbury a free borough in the 12th century, and the royal charter of liberties granted in 1698 remains in force. In 1471, during the Wars of the Roses, the Battle of Tewkesbury was an important Yorkist victory. Among buildings of architectural interest is the Black Bear (1308), perhaps the oldest inn in Gloucestershire; another inn, the Hop Pole, is mentioned in The Pickwick Papers by the 19th-century novelist Charles Dickens.

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Tewkesbury, reputedly famous for mustard in William Shakespeare’s day, is a center for boating and angling, especially on the slow-flowing Avon. The town’s main industries are flour milling, engineering, and boatbuilding. Pop. (2011) 10,704; (2021) 10,663.

The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica This article was most recently revised and updated by Barbara A. Schreiber.
Quick Facts
Date:
February 17, 1471
Location:
Tewkesbury
United Kingdom
England
Participants:
house of Lancaster
house of York
Context:
Wars of the Roses

Battle of Tewkesbury, (May 4, 1471), in the English Wars of the Roses, the Yorkist king Edward IV’s final victory over his Lancastrian opponents. Edward, who had displaced the Lancastrian Henry VI in 1461, later quarreled with his powerful subject Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick, and Warwick in 1470 restored Henry to the throne. In March 1471 Edward returned from Holland, defeating and killing Warwick at the Battle of Barnet on April 14. On that day King Henry’s queen, Margaret of Anjou, who had been in France with her son Prince Edward since 1462, landed at Weymouth, in Dorset, and moved northward to rally Lancastrian support in Wales. King Edward intercepted her army just south of Tewkesbury in Gloucestershire on May 3. Battle was joined the following day, each side numbering about 3,000 men. The Lancastrians had a strong defensive position, but a surprise Lancastrian attack on the Yorkist left miscarried, and the Yorkists broke the main Lancastrian position. About 1,000 men were killed, including Prince Edward and other Lancastrian leaders. The murder of Henry VI in the Tower of London (May 21–22) secured Edward’s position.

This article was most recently revised and updated by Amy Tikkanen.