IT will have come as no surprise to anyone with long, or even short, memories of Worcester to hear that Angel Place/Angel Street has been officially dubbed a crime hotspot in the city. The general reaction was probably: “So what’s new?”

More than 30 years ago I remember interviewing a local character – no names, but he was well known in the demolition and skip hire businesses – with a view to writing a piece about his life and times. He was notoriously volatile and the meeting had a few false starts, but he was a good friend of my father so I thought I should be OK.

Which I was, because we spent a fascinating afternoon talking about him growing up in Worcester in the 1920s and 30s. He said that back then one of his measures of a good Saturday night out was to have a skinful of beer followed by fish and chips in a newspaper and end the evening with a scrap in Angel Place. Fighting whoever, he didn’t appear to care.

The police, who in those days all seemed to be 6ft 6ins tall and about as wide, dealt instant justice and he recalled being dragged down a back alley by a burly sergeant one night and having the “s**t” knocked out of him by being battered with a heavy, wet police cape. “I deserved it,” he laughed. “No hard feelings in the morning, but a hell of a lot of bruises. Good night though.”

Unfortunately, but not unexpectedly, he changed his mind about the story once I had written it, so it never did see the light of day, which was a shame. But I seriously did not want him round my house knocking the front door down, even though he did know my dad. Who would probably only have laughed.

Then in the 1980s, I went on a night patrol with the police in Angel Place when the road had become a regular battleground for boozy crowds tipping out of the growing number of night clubs at closing time. Photographer John Pratt took a memorable image of SIX policemen struggling to get handcuffs on a very solid young lady who was screaming, kicking, punching and biting for all she was worth.

So Angel Place has plenty of previous. It was created in 1912 when a very narrow road called Little Angel Street, which linked Broad Street with Angel Street, was widened to relieve traffic congestion in the upper part of Broad Street and The Cross.

Berrow’s Journal at the time explained: “Little Angel Street has a width of only 9ft in parts, but is to be widened to a carriageway of 36ft. This will enable all carts and vehicles coming up Broad Street to find immediate access to the Sheep Market (which then stood adjacent to the Five Ways pub) without crowding The Cross.

“Similarly it will provide a readier and quicker route for a great deal of traffic from the west to Shrub Hill and Barbourne – and vice versa. It will also facilitate the quick departure of the Norwich Union fire engine to the west parts of the city and county and the speedier arrival of farmers’ wagons at the Hopmarket.”

Sadly there was a significant loss. The lovely old Georgian Bell Hotel, dating back to 1750 and “one of the musical and social rendezvous of Worcester”, had to be demolished to make way for Angel Place.

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