Tewkesbury Bowls Club was originally situated behind the Bell Hotel in Church Street.  Founded in 1828 and obviously popular from the start, it eventually built up to a large membership, as these early photos tell.  The hotel itself was built to provide accommodation for visitors to the Abbey and it is said that monks from the Abbey played on the original green.  There is in fact a long association between our Abbeys and bowling greens as the Abbeys often had plenty of large areas of flat land available.  Archers used these for practice and competitions and bowling developed as a means of keeping the archers occupied between bouts.  It would seem that besides the archers, the monks were also early devotees of the game. In 1975 when the land behind the Bell was developed for houses, our club moved into it's current location in Gander Lane - an enviable location on the edge of town with it's immediate backdrop of the Abbey and the countryside beyond.  A new club house was built and the area surrounding the green enhanced. Our members currently play in the North Gloucestershire League and the Three Rink County Cup.