Worcester lost so much history when Elgar's last home was destroyed

The fact the attractive property known as Marl Bank near the top of Rainbow Hill was replaced by an angular Sixties apartment block was bad enough, but that wasn’t really the half of it. Because the site also had an important connection with the English Civil War. 

Marl Bank on Rainbow Hill, Worcester, the last home of Sir Edward Elgar, demolished in 1969 to make way for a modern development

For it was there the Great Siege of 1646 ended when Worcester’s Royalist garrison, which had been supporting King Charles I, surrendered to Parliament. Thus becoming “the first of the cities that declared for the Crown and the last which held in defence thereof”. By the way, don’t confuse this with the Battle of Worcester involving Charles II which happened five years later.

The demolition of Marl Bank gets under way

When they took the wrecking ball to Marl Bank in 1969, the city had neither a proper museum charting Elgar’s life and times (that didn’t happen until 2000 when the facilities at his birthplace cottage at Lower Broadheath were expanded) nor a comprehensive Civil War centre, because the one at the Commandery didn’t open until  1977.

As historians have mentioned several times since, retention and conversion of Marl Bank would have solved one if not both of these demands. But what’s done is done, although it’s hard to gaze at the architecture of Elgar Court, which rose from the rubble, and dream of Gerontius or swashbuckling Cavaliers. 

Off Rainbow Hill runs Rainbow Hill Terrace with several elegant Regency properties. This one had fallen into dereliction

...but unlike Marl Bank it was restored to its former glory in the 1980sunlike Marl Bank it was restored to its former glory in the 1980s

At the bottom of Rainbow Hill, at the junction with Tolladine Road, there was once a turnpike gate, which until the 1860s marked the boundary between town and country. All beyond was green pasture and orchards and Rainbow Hill was a rural and picturesque place with a number of pretty villas half way up.

The house at the top, originally a farmhouse, had several names over the years. It was The Mount and Round Mount before Elgar, by then a widower, bought it as Marl Bank at the end of 1929. It was his 21st home and he was to die there in 1934, aged 76. Although the property was large for an elderly person, its appeal lay in having good views across the city to the cathedral, something Elgar would have appreciated in his twilight. 

It’s 1912 and Rainbow Hill Junior School pupils gather in classroom 10, so it must have been a sizeable establishment

Three centuries earlier, Worcester had been besieged twice in the Civil War, in 1643 and 1646. The latter lasted from March 26 until July 23 and only ended when news came that King Charles I had surrendered to the Scots at Newark in preference to being captured by the Parliamentary army.

At that the governor led the brave garrison in a march out of the city walls with flags flying to Round Mount on Rainbow Hill, where all were offered a free pass after pledging not to bear arms against Parliament again. The gentlemen among them were also allowed to keep their swords.

The Elgar family music shop at the cathedral end of High Street. By the 1950s it had become Sparks, one of the very few places in Worcester where you could buy American hot wax 78rpm rock ‘n’ roll records. Many a school lunch hour spent in

This explains why so few Worcestershire gentlemen took part in the 1651 Battle of Worcester, because they were not prepared to dishonour the promise they had made at the top of Rainbow Hill five years earlier.

Or as Elgar might have put it, they kept the pomp by remembering the circumstances.