City landmark is now just a castle in the air

It was first built about three years after the Norman Conquest of 1066, when the King's Sheriff to Worcester, Urso d'Abitot raised a great "motte" or mound and built a "castellum" to surmount it.

Local Saxon labour would have been used to construct this tall mound as headquarters for a Norman garrison, whose role was to intimidate the native population, particularly as Worcester then lay in the Welsh Marches.

The site was carefully chosen to overlook and police the river at the historic ford across the Severn, near the present Cathedral Watergate.

Despite its "castellum" description, the building topping the man-made mound would not have been of stone or with ramparts but a fortress and stockade affair with a solid timber enclosure and ditch.

This motte and bailey castle of timber then seems to have figured in warfare for some years including a rebellion by the Lords of the Marches.

In 1113, however, the wooden structure was destroyed by fire and replaced by a stone building which endured three sieges between 1140 and 1152 during the civil wars in which Matilda and Stephen vied for the throne.

The castle even survived Stephen's construction of two temporary "counter forts," one at Red Hill and the other on Henwick Hill.

Eventually, Matilda took the castle and appointed William de Beauchamp, a descendant of Urso d'Abitot, as hereditary Governor of "the castellum of Worcester on the motte".

In 1192, "modest sums" were spent improving the King's hall, chamber and cellar of the castle, and there were yet more improvements in 1204, just a few years before the fortress was again at the centre of military activity, this time during the civil war against King John.

In 1216, William Marshal, Earl of Pembroke, took the castle by force and declared in favour of the French Prince Louis, who was making a bid for the English throne, but the Earl of Chester entered the city via the castle, re-capturing it.

In 1217, the outer bailey of the castle was returned to the Worcester Cathedral Priory by Henry III, probably carrying out the wishes of his father, King John, while the castle mound itself stayed in the hands of William de Beauchamp, a powerful local baron whose substantial tomb is to be found in the Cathedral Nave.

Afterwards, however, the castle ceased to be of any military importance and became a prison - in fact, a record of 1221 notes several murderers having made an escape from it! The site continued to decrease in value and by 1316 Guy de Beauchamp were letting it out for grazing at 10 pence a year.

In 1549, the Tudor chronicler John Leland wrote of the castle: "It is now clean down, and the dungeon hill is overgrown with brushwood," and by 1613 records show all that was left was "a piece of stone building called the gaol wherein prisoners lie, it being about 16ft square."

In the 1640s, however, the castle mound regained an important and strategic role and was re-fortified to form a vital part of the defences of Worcester as the Royalists and Parliamentarians battled over the city during the English Civil War.

Throughout the 18th Century, however, Castle Hill reverted to being used as the county jail, finally being replaced early in the 19th Century by a big new prison at Salt Lane, later to become Castle Street.

Perhaps all this history explains why the "new" County Jail of 1813, was built so much to resemble a mediaeval castle!

In the 1820s, the old and derelict castle mound was sold to a city bookseller named Eaton, who started having it removed and the vast tonnage of earth carted away. The operation took 20 years and was not completed until 1843, when the last remains of Castle Hill were finally wiped from the city scene.

Thus it was that Worcester lost a prominent landscape feature that had stood for more than seven centuries, though some historians suggest there may have been a fortification at the spot even earlier in the time of Alfred, King of Wessex. Roman coins were also found on the spot when Castle Hill was removed.

The site is now covered by tranquil riverside gardens of The King's School with a plaque explaining the historical importance of Castle Hill.

Other physical reminders of it are Castle House at College Green and Castle Place, the narrow thoroughfare forming a driveway to The King's School between Edgar Tower and Lees' antique shop.

The background information for this article was drawn from books on the history of The King's School, Worcester.

n TWO Worcester "exiles" have been in touch to tell me of their great nostalgia for the Faithful City.

Tony Bird wrote from East Hagbourne, Didcot, Oxfordshire, to see if any of his wife's team-mates from the Cadbury's netball team of 1956, were still around in Worcester.

Mr Bird worked on the railways locally for many years and lived in Bath Road with his Worcester-born wife, Beryl (maiden name, Wilding). Mrs Bird would dearly like to know of the current whereabouts of members of the1956 netball team, champions that year of Division Two of the City of Worcester Netball League. She lists the names as N. Staite, B. Knight, M. Richmond, M. Dancox, J. Crawford and M. Staite.

n THE other "exile," Eric Webb has written to me from Plymouth. Devon. He was born in Diglis Avenue, in 1915, but his boyhood and youth were mainly spent with his parents in Edgar Street - first at No.15 and then at No.5.

His career of 47 years was to be spent with an insurance corporation, starting at offices in Foregate Street. Eric remembers well two bosses of Berrow's Newspapers Ltd, Tommy Jones and George Day during the time they spent as officers in the ARP based at the Guildhall in the war years.

"In the course of my ARP duties, I was sent down to take a message to the city's chief constable, Mr Tinkler, but I somehow managed to find the wrong door and barged in on a family meal, making a hurried retreat!"he says.

Alas, Eric lost his wife of 58 years, Barbara, in May 2002. They were married at St George's Church, Barbourne in 1944, while both serving in the forces. Eric says he still looks on his "beloved Worcester" as his "hometown" though his career took him to several other parts of the country.

Henry will give lecture

THE first annual Bill Gwilliam Memorial Lecture is to be given by his great friend, the BBC-TV Antiques Roadshow expert Henry Sandon of Worcester.

Eminent local historian Bill Gwilliam MBE, a regular and much valued contributor to Memory Lane in its early years, died at the age of 90 and was a founder member and past president of the Worcester Industrial Archaeology and Local History Society.

It is this organisation which has organised the first memorial lecture at Worcester's Huntingdon Hall on Sunday, October 26, at 7.30pm

The Evening with Henry Sandon will include an inevitably entertaining talk, slide show and film concerning the life of the popular ceramics expert and his love of Royal Worcester porcelain and china and his time as curator of the Dyson Perrins Museum at Worcester.

All tickets for the evening are £10 each, and are available from the box office at Huntingdon Hall in Deansway, Worcester (01905 611427).

The proceeds will go towards the restoration of one of the city's historic Hardy & Padmore wrought-iron bench seats which is to be placed in the South Quay area as a permanent riverside memorial to Bill Gwilliam.

Two Princes in the frame

IT was a joy when I recently discovered a rare old photograph among our pictorial archives of a Royal visit made to Worcester more than a century ago.

The historic scene, left and from April, 1894, was of the Duke of York, later King George V, arriving in a carriage outside Worcester Guildhall to be greeted by the Mayor and Corporation and a guard of honour formed by the local militia - note their superb headgear!.

The Royal visitor can clearly be seen sitting in the carriage and wearing a black top hat. The main reason for the Duke's visit to the city was to lay the foundation stone for the Victoria Institute.

George V was, of course, father of the Prince of Wales - later Edward VIII - who visited Worcester in October, 1932, to officially open the constructed river bridge.

A SUPERB original photographic print -above - has been sent me of the historic moment on October 28, 1932, when the Prince of Wales cut a ribbon with a sword to officially open the widened and reconstructed Worcester Bridge.

The picture archives at the Evening News do not include this significant scene so I am particularly grateful to Mrs Eileen Alkin of Bevere Close, Worcester, for donating it to us.

In the 1932 photograph you can spot, in profile to the right of the camera on a tripod, the face of Stanley Baldwin, who was to be so prominently involved as Prime Minister in the Abdication of the Prince he is watching at this ceremony - later Edward VIII.

The photograph was taken on the eastern bridgehead with a flag-festooned Bridge Street in the background.

n Mrs Alkin has also sent another photograph- left - of a very different sort from the same year, 1932. It's of the Conservative Imps float entered in the Worcester Carnival of that year and features her dressed, no doubt very uncharacteristically, as Mephistopheles, standing second from the right in the front row.

Mrs Alkins lists some of the other Imps" in fancy dress as Phyl Essell, Cyril Smith, Gerry Bennett, Dennis Clarke and Eric Skinner.

Severn's link with the Compleat Angler

SEVERNSIDE at Worcester was one of the favourite fishing haunts of Isaak Walton, the eminent 17th Century poet and author who wrote the once universally popular book, The Compleat Angler or The Contemplative Man's Recreation.

However, the Faithful City was also the scene of a great tragedy in the colourful life of this literary man - it was where his second wife died.

Walton was born at Stafford, in 1593. At the age of 16, he left for London and was apprenticed to an ironmonger named Grinsell, who had a shop in Fleet Street. A few years later, Walton branched out with an ironmongery business of his own in Chancery Lane.

In 1626, he married Rachel Flood, who bore him seven children, all of whom died in childhood or youth. She too died in 1640, leaving the unfortunate Walton a childless widower, though he was by then prosperous enough to retire from business and turn his talents to writing.

There was to be little peace for Walton because he was living through very troubled times in English history. As a staunch Royalist and Church of England man, he eventually left London during the English Civil War to seek security in his native Staffordshire. He judged the capital to be "too dangerous for honest men to be there".

Back in his home county, he was able to spend his time writing and fishing, and in 1646, he married Anne Ken, half-sister of Thomas Ken, who became Bishop of Bath and Wells.

Walton and his wife, whom he affectionately called "Kenna," gave shelter at the height of England's internal strife to Dr Morley, a Royalist clergyman, who had been one of the last chaplains to remain with the ill-fated Charles I.

However, with the king's execution in 1649, Dr Morley became even more of a marked man and fled from the Waltons' home to the continent where he joined the exiled ranks of close supporters of the future Charles II.

Nevertheless, Dr Morley was never to forget the kindness and protection given him by the Waltons, and he was able to show his gratitude in tangible form when he returned to England with the restoration of the throne to Charles II.

The King appointed Morley as Bishop of Worcester, and one of his first acts was to invite Walton and his wife to live at the Deanery, in the shadow of Worcester Cathedral. Walton was appointed as Steward to Bishop Morley and also looked after the finances.

Living so close to the Severn, Walton enjoyed much fishing along its banks, but the tranquility of his life was once more to be shattered by personal tragedy. His wife suddenly fell ill and died in April, 1662, at the age of 52.

Her funeral was held at Worcester Cathedral where she was also buried. Her memorial on the wall of the Sanctuary of the Lady Chapel carries an epitaph written by Isaak Walton, He describes her as "a woman of remarkable prudence and piety, great and general knowledge, adorned with humility and blest with so much Christian meakness as to make her worthy of a more mememorable monument", adding: "Study to be like her".

Not long after Kenna's death, Bishop Morley moved from Worcester to become Bishop of Winchester, and Walton went with him, dying there in 1683, at the age of 90. He is buried in Winchester Cathedral.

Can you help?

n In the wake of my recent Memory Lane features on the former Vinegar Works at Lowesmoor, Evening News reader Tim Brazier of Pickersleigh Grove, Malvern has set me a poser I cannot answer

He writes: "I wonder if the firm which owned the Vinegar Works - Hill, Evans - had any connection with Thomas & Evans, who sold Corona Soft Drinks. I remember in the mid-1930s seeing their red-coloured lorries in Malvern, delivering door-to-door. A small crate containing four bottles was left at each house and picked up as empties the following week when a new supply was delivered."

Can readers throw any light on the firm of Thomas & Evans and whether there was indeed any connection with Hill, Evans?

Anyone with information can write to me at the Evening News, Hylton Road, Worcester WR2 5JX.