ON Friday, September 25, Chris Wilkinson, who often sends in old photographs to this paper, will be presenting an evening of nostalgic images of old Worcester at a digital show in St Clement's church, opposite Henwick Medical Centre in Henwick Road.
The evening, which starts at 7pm, is free and as a taster Chris supplied me with a couple of shots of what the Sidbury area of the city was like in the 1960s. Both come from the collection of John Mudge and are dated 1964. One shows demolition in progress at the south end of High Street, near where Elgar's statue now stands and the site of the current Cathedral roundabout alterations, while the other is at the far end of Sidbury at what was the shop of well known local motorbike retailer Bladders.
The pictures got us thinking and a swift delve into the files of colleague Mike Grundy unearthed three more scenes of the Sidbury area in the middle of the 20th century.
It's hard to envisage now, but for many years the street was one way, traffic restricted by the width of the bridge over the canal near the Commandery. Dated 1957, comes the photograph of the bridge being widened, with the Commandery clearly visible on the left and the right turn into Bath Road yet to be built. Another is taken from the tower of Worcester Cathedral in 1949 looking down on to the top end of College Street showing many buildings that were to disappear during "the sack of Worcester" in the mid-1960s.
But the most remarkable is a composite created in 1967 when there was much debate about the future of the derelict country mansion Witley Court, about ten miles west of the city. It's grounds were home to the magnificent Perseus and Andromeda fountain, which was crumbling apart, and the idea was floated of moving the spectacular stonework and relocating it on to the traffic island opposite Worcester Cathedral. Of course the suggestion was really only a pipe dream because of the enormous costs involved, but had it come true and all the water connections been made, this would have been some centrepiece for Worcester, the city where much of the fountain was carved at William's Monumental Studio in the Tything.
For the journey to Witley Court the stonework was loaded on to a specially constructed wagon pulled by 17 shire horses and since the road at Little Witley was too steep, it had to be raised by 15-20 feet. No expense spared there.
