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?
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
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
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
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