IT might not necessarily look like it now, although some may tend to disagree, but there was a time when the Diglis area was one of the poshest parts of Worcester.
Before its recent revitalisation, it had become more commonly associated with the river docks, the canal and narrow terraced streets. Before that, in the 1700s, it was a fashionable resort and pleasure gardens and continued this way until around 1830.
Standing outside the city walls it was a picturesque district and quite an attraction for visitors to the county town, who would come from far and wide.
Here there were assembly rooms, a riding school and a bowling green, all occupying an area near the city defences where the wall went down to the Severn.
The bowling green, which was adorned by two statues known as Gog and Magog, the work of Nathaniel Wilkinson who built St Andrew’s spire in Deansway, existed for a long time and was known as the “Hand in Glove Club”.
Here the gentlemen played bowls on the green and afterwards joined the ladies in a dance in the long room on the ground floor.
After dusk the members turned to card playing and for the duration of the City Assize and the Three Choirs Festival, public breakfasts and tea parties were very popular. In case tastes were rather more brutal, in nearby Frog Lane there was a cockpit, which was still in use in 1825.
Not quite on a par with scrapping cockerels, but suitably violent all the same, was a fist fight that took place at the Bowling Green between two professional men who should really have known better.
They were hospital surgeon Matthew Pierpoint, after whom the street was named when it was built across his land, and solicitor Charles Bedford, an archetypal Regency buck who lived in Barbourne and was a renowned amateur boxer.
The reason for their pre-arranged rumble has been long forgotten, but both were hotheads and so it was quite predictable. The action ended with Pierpoint, who was half the size of his opponent, being knocked cold.
Unfortunately the victory did Bedford no good at all, his social standing suffered and he died early “after a life of pleasure and hard drinking”.
The eventual downfall of the pleasure gardens was also linked to personal grievance, this time a fracas in which one of the combatants received a fatal stab wound. After that the bowing green was abandoned, the pleasure gardens disappeared and in moved the Victorian builders and the dockers.
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