Tolladine Road in Worcester has much more history than you might think

I HAVE said it a thousand times – Everywhere has a story to tell. Tolladine Road is a very busy arterial road running in and out of the Worcester.

To the people living on it, it is affectionately called Tolly, they may reminisce about having their first pint in the Farmer’s Boy or talk about playing on the now closed municipal golf course.

Tolladine Road takes its name from the Teolowaldingc family, who rented out a small number of simple timber dwellings overlooking the Anglo-Saxon burgh (fortified town) of Worcester. The area is recorded in seventh and eighth-century Charters.

Tolladine Road was once nothing more than a single dirt track leading out of the city, with farmland sitting on either side.

To glimpse this ancient farmland take a walk across Ronkswood Meadow. If you visit the meadow you can see evidence of the ‘ridge and furrow’. These linear lumps and bumps were made by our ancestors who walked behind an ox which pulled a plough.

Farming this land would have been pretty tough as the incline and local clay marl made the going very difficult. It is not surprising that the area was soon being used for grazing cattle and sheep.

Even in the modern age, cattle can be seen grazing on the meadow. This was introduced by the council as an effective way of managing this important and well-loved local nature reserve.

Read more: Worcester's lost mansions – Warmstry House

By the English Civil War the high ground that Tolladine Road runs up became a useful gun position for the Parliament army, who besieged the city twice, in 1643 and 1646. If you look carefully you can see some of the earthworks created almost 400 years ago to protect the cannons which aimed their shot on St Martin’s Gate and the stretch of the city wall to the east of Worcester.

Traditionally this area also saw Cromwell’s New Army, who built a large camp in the area. Victorian Antiquarians talked about a Civil War Camp being visible near Elbury Mount. Unfortunately any evidence of this was destroyed when the reservoir was built.

Located at the top of the hill stands The Virgin Tavern. In the 19th century this would have been a popular watering hole for people and horses that had made the steep climb up the road.

The Worcester Railways Act from 1870 actually referred to the road as Virgin’s Tavern Road. This showed the importance of this lonely place of hospitality. Despite the current building looking modern, the Tavern would have had earlier origins and was linked to the White Ladies Nunnery in the Tything.

Another popular pub was the Farmer’s Boy, further down the hill, which was built in the 1950s on the site of Deppards Farm. The pub has now become Altafs balti restaurant.

To reduce the steepness of the road, a cutting was created at the bottom of the hill. Today houses stand precariously on what resembles a quarry face and high brick walls tower above the traffic lights at the junction of Sheriff Street.

Most of the housing along Tolladine Road began to appear after the two World Wars, when slums were being removed in the city centre and people were moved to the fresh air of the hillside surrounding the city.

The railway bridges that hold the tracks running into the Shrub Hill sidings was not the only dominating industry to occupy Tolladine Road.

Warehouse buildings occupy the area near the bottom of Tolladine Road. In 1818 Worcester established the Gas Light and Coke Company on the site now occupied by Bradford’s Building Merchants.

This came to an end in 1965, but the gasometers were a local landmark until they were removed many years later.

During the Second World War the road was planned as a ‘tank killing zone’. If a German invasion had arrived from the west, the local Home Guard would need to protect Birmingham and the Industrial Black Country at all costs.

The Local Invasion Committee planned to bombard tanks from the railway bridges using grenades and Molotov cocktails! Meanwhile a searchlight battery shone across the city from the top of Ronkswood Meadow.

The concrete footings of a Nissen hut are still visible when you look carefully.

If you believe the area you live has no heritage, please think again.