THE ADVENTURE OF THE RUNAWAY PONIES The distance from Evesham to Elmley Castle, a little village under Bredon Hill, is only five or six miles, and the Slowcoaches were comfortably encamped in a field there by six o'clock, for at Evesham they did no more than walk through the churchyard to the beautiful square Bell Tower with its little company of spires on the roof.

Mary bought a guide at a shop at the corner of the market-place and read the story.
This Bell Tower, with a gateway and a wall or so, is all that remains of a Benedictine abbey which was built by the Bishop of Worcester in the reign of Ethelred.

The Bishop, it seems, had a swineherd named Eoves, who one day, while wandering in the Forest of Arden ("In which the scene of 'As You Like It' is laid, Hester, and which used to cover all the ground where Evesham now stands"), was visited in a vision by three radiant damsels.

He returned at once and told the Bishop, who, on being led to the same spot, after a preparation of fasting and prayer, had the same vision, and at once recognized the damsels as the Virgin Mary and two Angels.
At that time the meaning of such heavenly visitations was plain, and the Bishop at once set about building an abbey on the spot.

He appointed himself the first abbot and named it after his swineherd Eoves--Eoves'ham.
The abbey was large and prosperous, but the Danes destroyed it in one of their raids, and it had to be rebuilt on a more splendid scale.