Worcester tannery: a story of ghosts and elephants

Before moving  offices to Redhill at the top of London Road, Worcester, last year, this newspaper had its HQ in Hylton Road on the other side of the city for more than 50 years. The building was newly constructed overlooking the Severn and opened in 1965. Adjacent to it stood an old tannery known as Severn Bank Tannery, which had been there since at least the turn of the century.

However the tannery closed in 1966 and this substantial building was eventually acquired by the newspaper’s owners Reed Newspapers and converted into our training centre.

It also housed, if I remember rightly, the accounts department. All trace of the old skin factory and its associated odours disappeared to be replaced by corporate colours and corridors.

However, after about 10 years and with the newspaper business starting to change even then, Reed decided it didn’t want this expensive facility and the BBC took it over. Ever since 1989 it has been the hub of local radio station BBC Hereford and Worcester. Now we get to the elephant.

Across the river lies the open expanse of Pitchcroft, Worcester’s playground for centuries, home to  a National Hunt racecourse and the regular venue for fairs, circuses and the like. According to ancient legend – and who doesn’t like an ancient legend – at some indeterminate time in the past an elephant performing in a circus on Pitchcroft died and its carcass was carted across the river and the hide tanned at Severn Bank Tannery.

The riverside at Worcester photographed by Brian Buckle from the top of the cathedral on a summer Sunday in 1961. Severn Bank Tannery can be seen in Hylton Road just above the railway bridge

There is a second version of the story, which has been circulating recently, in which the dead elephant was taken to the tannery, but that its carcass was buried there and the ghost of the beast now haunts the building.

Neither, I have it on good authority, is true. Which is probably excellent news for those of a nervous disposition on the late shift at BBC Hereford and Worcester and explains why none of our old payroll department ever felt the need to call Ghostbusters.

This building, seen in 1961, used to stand on the site in Hylton Road later to become the fruit and vegetable market and now Worcester Arena

Jack Randall, a member of the family that owned the tannery from 1911 until its closure, told me: “The true story is this. Another Randall tannery was at Kenilworth and the elephant actually died in the circus there. The Kenilworth factory tried to tan the skin, but it was not a success, so part of it was sent to Worcester for the resident chemist to try to find a different way of tanning.

“In fact the sample at Worcester was tanned successfully and was later donated to the County Museum at Hartlebury, where it was probably thrown away years ago. I remember the saga well, because as a young lad I saw the sample.”

So ends the story of the Ghost in the Tannery and if you do happen to see an apparition that looks like Nellie wandering down Hylton Road late one night, you need to take more water with it. However, parts of the story do have a sound basis. Elephants certainly did appear in many of the circuses held on Pitchcroft over the years and at least one did die and was buried in Worcestershire.

But that was out at Bridges Stone, among the apple orchards of Alfrick, when a circus was evacuated there during the Second World War. Although knowing the cider drinkers of Alfrick, the ghost of an elephant would likely be a fairly common occurrence.