IN the early decades of the 20th century, Berrow’s Worcester Journal – sister paper to the News and the oldest continuously published newspaper in the world – used to publish a regular pictorial supplement with its weekly editions cataloguing the goings on in the county.

These were the days when the main body of the paper rarely contained photographs, so this was a means of illustrating news stories and there were often references in the captions to relevant story. The supplements were also a way of covering the county’s social scene and there are many pictures of hunt meets, garden parties, annual dinners, ladies presented at Court and other hob nob occasions.

Wandering through the pages gives a fascinating glimpse into how Worcestershire was around a hundred years ago. In the days of sepia prints, top hats, ladies in long dresses and when most transport was horse drawn.

It was also the days of freak shows – hairy women, Siamese twins, midgets, giants etc etc etc – and while Berrow’s hardly entered the fray, in 1909 it did find space for “the fat boy of Wychbold” who weighed 15 stone and was aged 11.

On the social scene there is a rarely published photograph of the Earl and Countess of Dudley and their children, the Hon Roderick Ward, Lady Morvyth Ward, Lady Alexandra P Ward and Lady Honor Ward, taken on the steps of Witley Court in the spring of 1909. The caption says the Earl and Countess “are winning as much popularity in Australia as in Ireland”.

The First World War was supposed to be “the war to end all wars” and so when it finished there appeared little value in continuing to produce some of the military hardware it had spawned. Army surplus tanks, for example, were touted to the building trade as ideal means of demolishing buildings prior to redevelopment. In May, 1919 a demonstration of what a tank could do to a house was staged.

In 1909 a Fire Extinguisher Exhibition was staged and one of the star attractions was the Alpha hydro pneumatic fire extinguisher made by Brickley and Co of New Street.

From March, 1909 comes an unusual photograph showing The Foregate, Worcester before a widening scheme was started. It was taken from what is described as “the site of the Old Coffee Tavern”, which by the look of it was somewhere opposite the Victoria Institute, with Foregate Street railway bridge in the background.

Talking about the railway bridge, another image taken in May 1909 shows the replacement of a girder on the bridge. Something I can never recall happening in a lifetime living around here. Finally an image showing how sporting apparel has changed over the years. Entrants in the King’s School Boys Run in April 1909, which took place from the Cathedral ferry to the Ketch at the top of Bath Road, presumably mostly along the river towpath. The Royal Grammar School equivalent was alongside the Worcester-Birmingham canal towards Perdiswell and back. This was notable for an escapade in the Sixties when three miscreants decided to hitch a lift to halfway sitting on the back of a flatbed truck.

They thought they were doing well until they overtook a master in Barbourne cycling to the same destination.

The trio couldn’t sit down anywhere for a week.