Hailes Abbey

Ruins of a Cistercian abbey, situated near Winchcombe, Gloucestershire, England, at the foot of the Cotswold Hills. The abbey was founded in 1246 by Richard, Earl of Cornwall and King of the Romans, brother to Henry III. In 1270 the monks were presented with a phial containing the ‘Blood of Hayles’, which attracted numerous pilgrims until the Dissolution of the Monasteries in the 1530s. It is now owned by the National Trust.

Only a few walls, and some of the pointed bays of the cloisters, are now remaining, but the foundations of the great church have been carefully indicated by the planting of yew hedges. The museum contains a collection of bosses, early tiles and other relics of the abbey.