Three generations of serving the essentials

They were butchers and fishmongers in the Faithful City for the best part of a century and were based mainly in the historic trading core formed by The Shambles, New Street and Mealcheapen Street.

I've been learning about his forebears from Worcester building contractor Tony Bryan, who possesses a superb collection of old photographs and documents relating to the Bryan family.

Their significant part in the life of Worcester over the past 130 years began with the arrival in the city of Tony Bryan's great-grandfather, Albert Bryan.

He was born in 1843, near Moreton-in-Marsh, Gloucestershire, and came to Worcester as a young man of very little means in the mid-1860s.

However, by his late 20s, he was shown in city directories as being a butcher at 48 and 49 Carden Street, where he was living with his wife, Jane whose maiden name was Dance and whose father had been a forester on the Earl of Dudley's estates near Worcester.

Clearly, Albert Bryan was a very successful butcher because before long, in late Victorian times, he had a string of shops in Worcester. They were at Carden Street, 9 Hylton Road, 20 New Street and at 39 The Shambles, which became the Bryan family home.

It was there that son Albert Edgar Bryan was born in 1876 and where Albert senior and Jane also brought up their only other child, Sydney.

Tony Bryan says his great grandfather Albert Bryan was very much "a self-made man" and "a prominent man of the town."

Tales passed down the family over the years suggest that Albert became wealthy and, at one time, lived in a large country house near Wichenford.

However, his wealth had mysteriously disappeared by the time of his death in 1895, at the age of 52, when he and his wife Jane were living in the St Martin's Gate area of Worcester.

Sons Albert Edgar and Sydney no doubt worked for their father in his shops but when he died they became journeymen butchers and were to spend their working lives in the employ of local butchers.

But it was not just as butchers that Albert junior and Sydney were to be popular local figures. They were also to earn considerable renown on the athletics track as exceptionally good sprinters, who won a huge horde of medals and trophies, not just around the Midlands but nationwide.

Their heydays on the track were about a century ago, and a photograph reproduced here shows them with just some of their haul of prizes, including large musical boxes, decanters, clocks and canteens of cutlery.

Albert Edgar Bryan married Mary Ann Bray from a long-established Worcester family, and for many years she ran a general stores at 13 Lansdowne Road, also bringing up a sizeable family.

I hope to feature the Brays of Worcester in a future Memory Lane article.

Albert Edgar and Mary both died in their 70s - she in 1947, he in 1955.

One of their sons, Percy (Tony Bryan's father) was born in 1907, while they were living in St Paul's Street. He went to St Paul's School and vividly remembered powerful sermons given to school assemblies by the Rev Geoffrey Studdert Kennedy, the legendary Woodbine Willie, who was vicar of the neighbouring St Paul's Church from 1914 to 1922.

On leaving school at 14, Percy went to work for "Farmer" Eden at his Shambles fruit and vegetable shop but soon moved to Harry Shapland's fish and game shop at the corner of The Shambles and Pump Street.

Percy, known to friends as Sid, was to spend most of his working life at Shapland's, but this family firm eventually closed and was taken over by fruit and vegetable dealer Edgar Thompson, who became Percy's new boss.

Alas, the original Shapland premises no longer survive, they were pulled down for redevelopment in modern times. A card and gift shop now occupies the site.

Percy finished his working days at Edgar Thompson's stall in The Shambles Market Hall.

Percy always suffered from Perthe's disease, an inflammation of the hip which caused him to limp. Even so, he was called up for active service in the Royal Artillery in 1940, being passed medically A1 despite notifying the authorities of his condition.

He took to Army life but his disability became increasingly obvious and he had to be discharged on medical grounds after only eight months' service, though being given a glowing report. He then became an ARP warden in Worcester, for the remainder of the war.

In 1935, he had married Edith Lavina Bayliss whose father James was born at Dolday, in 1880, but who walked from Worcester to Birmingham as a teenager to find work and to set up home for life.

Edith died at the age of 58, in 1971, but husband Percy survived to the age of 81, dying in 1988. They had two children, Kitty and Anthony.

Kitty Bryan married David Beacham of Hallow, who is widely known in bell-ringing circles but, alas, she died in 1987.

Tony Bryan was born at the family home, 9 Lansdowne Road - just a few doors away from No.13 where his grandmother, Mary Anne had kept a shop for many years.

Tony has been in the construction industry all his working life and runs his own building firm. He went to the St Mary's and St Martin's schools before finishing his education at the Worcester Technical High School.

In 1959, he was awarded the prize for being the top senior apprentice in the Midlands and he has been a tutor in brickwork at the Worcester College of Technology and at Borstal institutions.

Tony was a founder member of the Worcester Elgar Round Table, was one-time chairman of the Worcester 41 Club and is a long-standing member of the Worcester South Rotary Club and of the Freemasons. In his younger days, he was an excellent ballroom dancer.

He and his wife Barbara live in a large riverside house he has recently built at The Wilderness, off Hallow Road, Worcester.

Tony stresses that there are quite a lot of Bryans living in and around Worcester, and the family is "intermingled" with several other long-established local families such as furniture removers Lambs, the Easts and the Dones.

His father was one of a large family, and his brothers included Bert Bryan, a leading international jockey; Bill Bryan, who worked for Harry Shapland's brother at another fish and game shop in The Shambles; and George Bryan, who lost a leg at the age of only 18 during the First World War.

In fact, an amusing tale has been handed down through the family about brothers George and Bill.

George was fitted with an aluminium artificial leg while Bill was widely known as Hoppy because his one leg was shorter than the other and he had a distinct limp. Both brothers had special footwear on one foot - George for his artificial limb and Bill for his shorter leg.

This meant that each only needed one ordinary "good" shoe, and it seems that during the Depression, times were so hard that George and Bill went together to a local shoe shop and asked to look at a pair of boots they fancied. George tried on one and Bill the other, and both were agreed they would take the pair.

"The shop assistant exclaimed that it was the first time he had ever sold one pair of boots to two people," says nephew Tony Bryan.

Still living in Bath Road, Worcester, is Peggy Bryan, daughter of Sydney Bryan, brother and fellow sprinter of Tony Bryan's grandfather, Albert Edgar Bryan.