FLEETINGLY back in the spotlight is a Worcester family firm which ran a thriving hop and seed merchants business from three landmark city buildings through much of the 20th Century.

Gascoyne's had large warehouses on the riverside at South Quay, in Sansome Street and Southfield Street.

The historic South Quay premises - now Gascoyne House, a luxury apartments complex - was filled with machinery for the cleaning and preparation of agricultural seeds, while the Southfield Street property - today, Lambs furniture store - was a hop warehouse.

Gascoyne's four-storey warehouse on the north side of Sansome Street was used primarily as the company's office base but was demolished in the early 1970s, though buildings to the rear, serving for years as flats, were converted for use as part of the Worcester Arts Workshop which now graces the site.

Gascoyne's was founded, almost certainly in late Victorian times, by George Gascoyne, who was succeeded by his son, also George, who served in the local TA Regiment in the First World War and ran the firm until his death in 1960.

He was known as a good-hearted man and benefactor, particularly helping First World War veterans with cash to buy shovels and the like so they could find jobs in the building trade. In those days, workmen were expected to have their own tools and equipment. The Gascoyne family home was a substantial house called Lindisfarne in Barbourne Terrace.

I've been learning about Gascoyne's from Derek Jones of Coppice Close, Malvern, who went to work for the firm at the age of 14, in 1942.

"Sadly, George Gascoyne lost both his sons - Patrick and George - in the Second World War. They were in the RAF and died in bombing raids over Germany. Afterwards, he more or less treated me as an adopted son," said Derek.

He recalls that a building attached to Gascoyne's South Quay warehouse was occupied by builders, WW Hunt and that, during nearby excavations in Hood Street "two beautiful wells" were uncovered but, alas, stripped of their lead pipes and filled in with rubble.

Derek Jones and wife Kathleen spent their early married years in one of the flats in the building to the rear of Gascoyne's Sansome Street offices - now part of the Arts Workshop.

Derek left the firm in 1960 after the death of George Gascoyne and became a builder. He and his wife lived in Rowley Hill Street, St John's, before moving to Malvern.

However, the main reason why Derek contacted me was to question some information in my Memory Lane feature on Richard Inglethorpe, who was a significant benefactor and property owner in Worcester during his life, which spanned the years 1560-1618.

He left money in his will for the building of almshouses for the city's poor, and the first cluster of these was erected on what, in time, became the site of Gascoyne's Sansome Street premises.

From information given to me for the Richard Inglethorpe feature, I stated that the original 1620 foundation stone for his Sansome Street almshouses had been rediscovered, much damaged, at Upton Snodsbury in the 1940s.

However, Derek Jones's recollection is that it was, in fact, unearthed in fragments on the Gascoyne's site in Sansome Street. "George Gascoyne paid to have it painstakingly restored, and I remember seeing the fragments laid out on a bench at WW Hunt's, the builders, at South Quay. Once restored, it was erected on Gascoyne's offices at Sansome Street," added Derek.

That same foundation stone, yet again restored after 30 years in storage, was recently officially unveiled at a new permanent location in Taylor's Lane, close to where another cluster of Richard Inglethorpe almshouses once stood.