The inscription can still be made out. It is carved in stone over the porch of what was once the old grammar school, but is now the hall and institute of the local Labour Party. Orate pro anima Clementis Abbas. So all are bidden who pass this way in Evesham town, whether they belong to the Labour Party or have quite other political convictions, to remember the soul of the last Abbot of Evesham—Clement Lichfield.

He it was who built the Bell Tower, a campanile apart and independent, that the bells of the great abbey might have a house worthy of their message. And of all that vast monastery, that holy house of St. Egwin, its first abbot and bishop of Worcester, nothing remains save the Bell Tower and some crumbling stone foundations. Hardly was the Bell Tower finished when the crash came. To Henry VIII in the year 1539 the riches of Evesham were a temptation not to be missed. Usurped authority must needs buy support, and these abbey lands at Evesham, as elsewhere, judiciously bestowed could win many to approve the royal supremacy. Not only the good land, but the wealth and splendour of the abbey shrines and the very stones must be taken and distributed. The monks, too, must be dispersed, for Archbishop Cranmer discerned that while monasticism survived great would be the difficulty of introducing the new religion, of pouring the new wine of Luther and Zwingli into the old bottles of the Catholic Church in England.