A FEW weeks ago, our Nostalgia writer Mike Pryce produced a piece about Worcester’s plague pits and whether there might be one underneath the junction of Angel Street and Angel Place.
The consensus now seems to be that is not the case but mention was made among readers about the possibility of there being one at Tallow Hill, which was indeed so, that area of the city being still outside the city walls when the disease swept through Worcester.
Close to Tallow Hill was another part of Worcester which has since been razed to the ground and given fresh life – Hillborough.
It was the site of the Union Workhouse (1794-1926), which begat Shrub Hill Infirmary (1926-1952-54) and eventually Hillborough, where Worcester’s forgotten families lived when circumstances meant they no longer had a roof over their heads.
The extensive range of buildings were demolished in 1986 to make way, among other things, for new housing by Westbury Homes, and St Paul’s Hostel.
Perhaps you remember the day the 100ft tall former hospital boiler chimney was demolished – creating a monumental pile of bricks?
Kind-hearted Margaret Packman donated more than £200 to the city’s Hillborough Child Centre for under-privileged youngsters in the city in 1978. She is pictured ready to some of the children from their favourite storybook
The kitchen area in Ankerdine Block at Hillborough before its modernisation in 1973. Homeless families lived in the block, occupying a three-storey section of the city’s former workhouse: “dark, dank and Dickensian” as Worcester Evening News Michael Grundy wrote at the time
The dormitory in Ankerdine Block as it looked before Worcester Social Services Committee reacted to Michael Grundy’s story from March 1973 and put into effect a package of measures to alleviate the situation
March 1973 and Cllr Leslie Portman, right, surveys one family’s temporary home after a cleaning-up operation by volunteers
This picture dates from 1928 and captures the opening of the nurses’ home at the former Poor Law Institution or, as it was better known at the time, the Worcester “Workhouse”. The picture was shared with the Worcester News in 1986 by Brian McKechnie, of Northwick Road, whose grandfather Thomas Beechey was one of the Board of Guardians in the picture
A Christmas tea party in 1973
The dormitory in 1973 after a £4,500 programme of alterations and improvements to Ankerdine Block
This picture dates from 1976 and shows the considerable extent of the Hillborough range of buildings
An aspect of Hillborough as it stood in September 1974
It’s all the way back to July 1972 and the opening of a sun lounge for male residents after 18 months of fundraising by the Friends of Hillborough. Turning the key is the Mayor of Worcester, Rachel Clapton
The former hospital chimney comes down in April 1987 as the former Hillborough site is flattened to make way for new housing
The remains of the 100ft tall hospital boiler chimney stack after its demolition in April 1987
Worcester City curator Iain Rutherford pictured with a “time capsule” jar uncovered during demolition works. Inside the glass jar were copies of The Berrow’s Journal and The Times dated May 18 1893, silver coins from the same year, and a document about the opening of the “new” Hillborough
Children’s pictures can still be seen amid the rubble as the Hillborough buildings are razed to the ground in early 1987
The early stages of the new St Paul’s Hostel in December 1986
November 1988 and most traces of the old Hillborough site have vanished, with new housing put up by Westbury Homes in its place
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