IN the years following the Second World War, when its headquarters were in The Trinity, Worcester, this newspaper, along with its weekly sister publication Berrow’s Worcester Journal, used to be associated with a quarterly magazine called Worcestershire Countryside.

Its editor was Miss Valentine Noake, who was a journalist on the Worcester Evening News and Times for many years and writer of the Woman’s Page for much of them.

The hey-day of Worcestershire Countryside was long before the county began taking overspill from Birmingham and the Black Country, when Warndon was a country parish, motorways were unheard of and a time when Worcestershire as a whole was very much a rural county.

Indeed in many villages the milkman, or woman, called by in a pony and trap, milk was ladled straight from silver steel churns into cottagers’ jugs and these were placed in the pantry with a muslin cover over to keep the contents cool.

Fridges were a luxury for most, very few homes had telephones or televisions, and most domestic clothes washing was still done by hand.

As its title indicates, Worcestershire Countryside was pitched squarely at the country reader, of which there were many more than there are today. Primarily because there was a lot less town and a lot more countryside.

That doesn’t mean to say the magazine ignored city scenes and a couple of aerial images, taken in early 1947 presumably from a hot air balloon, of the cathedral and the riverside show how much the face of Worcester has changed over the years.

Life at Sammy's school

But it was a time when the county gentry still held considerable sway, hence the appearance of figures like Lady Coventry, from the family associated with Croome Court, Agatha, Lady Hindlip, whose ancestral home is now West Mercia Police headquarters, and Countess Beauchamp of Madresfield Court, who makes a glamorous appearance in a local nod to Country Life’s “girls in pearls” page.

One of the particularly interesting features of Worcestershire Countryside was the advertising. Anyone of advancing years, who lived around here would recall names like Warwick House of Malvern, HA Saunders, the motor dealers in Castle Street, Worcester, jewellers JW Cassidy in High Street, chemists Anderson and Virgo in The Foregate, taxi firm Silver Wings and home furnishers W & F Webb, also in High Street.

Cavendish House of Cheltenham and Marshall and Snelgrove of Birmingham were big advertisers and there were full page adverts for cigarettes. It was almost a lifetime away.