Evesham in the traditional high street and the Riverside Shopping Centre, and Four Pools Lane Retail Park. The Valley (formerly Evesham Country Park), is a large retail and leisure park located out of town with a diversity of stores, restaurants and cafés. In 1728 the London to Worcester road through Evesham was turnpiked as was the Evesham to Alcester road in 1778 improving communications in the area. Evesham is at the junction of the A46 and A44 trunk roads – the £7 million, A46 single-carriageway bypass to the east of the town opened in July 1987 as the A435. The River
Worcestershire in the English Civil War effectively common land, with long-established although informal usage rights. Other local grievances against the Crown included action to suppress profitable tobacco production, which was well established in the Vale of Evesham. Charles I was simultaneously pursuing religious policies that provoked suspicion in Worcestershire. Although the county had a Catholic minority among its aristocratic families, the rest of the population was firmly Anglican, with a growing group of more radical Protestants in some of its northern towns, such as Kidderminster. Charles' apparent Catholic sympathies, such as the reforms of William Laud that reintroduced many of the trappings of Catholicism back into