Telling tales of Tallow Hill

This is no doubt because the city's Victorian Workhouse formed the imposing backcloth to the Tallow Hill scene for many decades, while the centrepiece of the area was The Mortuary - an old burial ground with a scattering of blackened tombs and headstones.

It was during my impressionable years from the ages of seven to 11 that I passed daily through Tallow Hill and The Mortuary on my way home from Stanley Road Boys' School to The Cross, to catch the Bath Road bus.

That was from 1945 to 1949, and my abiding impression of Tallow Hill then was of it having been a fairly bleak and depressing place.

But this was clearly not the experience of one Memory Lane reader, who spent his boyhood living at Tallow Hill and remembers only "marvellous times and happy days" there, especially during the war years.

To Bob Whiting of Spetchley Road, Worcester, it was a "brilliant" and vibrant place with a great community spirit.

Bob, nicknamed Bingo, was born in 1936, at Lower Wick Lodge in Malvern Road. His father, Tim Whiting, was a motor engineer but, alas, he and his wife Ethel parted in the late 1930s, and sons Bob, John and Monty went to live through the war with their aunt Daisy at 8 Tallow Hill, which had previously been a pub - the Crown and Anchor.

Miss Daisy Whiting was a teacher at Sunnyside School and, in all, was to spend more than 50 years on the staff there under headmistress Miss Tysoe.

Bob Whiting recalls: "We kept five pigs and 30 odd fowls at 8 Tallow Hill where, from its days as a pub, there was a large yard and white-tiled outside lavatories which were ideal for housing the pigs. Clearly at aunt Daisy's we never went short of eggs or pork.

"The Ministry men would come round from time-to-time to inspect the pigs and, on slaughtering, we were allowed to keep half-a-pig for ourselves. However, we always had a secret extra pig, concealing it away in one of the pub's old cellars whenever the Ministry men called. When that extra pig was eventually killed, bits of it went to houses all up the road so they could have a good meal, too!"

Bob's best mate from those boyhood days was Tommy Atkinson, who lived "next door but one". Other youngsters from the area who played at The Mortuary in Bob's time were Ray Creese, Gerald and Benny Amos, John Marshall, Lionel and Les Clutterbuck, John Brewer, former Worcester Mayor Derek Prodger and his brother John, and the late Graham Williams, mine host of the Shakespeare Hotel in Angel Street, whose mother kept a small grocery shop in Hill Street.

"The Mortuary was surrounded by hedges and some elm trees in those days, and a gardener was employed to keep it neat and tidy. There were several tombs and gravestones in one part, and a kids' park with cast iron see-saws in another.

"We used to play football in The Mortuary but quite often small areas of it would cave in, exposing vaults under the tombs or opening up graves where coffin tops and skeletons could be seen. In hard winters, The Mortuary and the canal would be covered with ice, which made them wonderful places for our sledge rides

"We lived next to Cravens', the bakers who supplied Woolworth's in High Street with all their bread, cakes and doughnuts. It was a super bakery, and families living in and around Tallow Hill got their bread and cakes from Cravens'. Other next-door neighbours were the Becks, and not far away lived a Mrs. Pittaway, who had glandular trouble and was quite huge. In fact, her family had trouble getting her out through the front door, though she liked to be placed in her front garden to watch the world go by.

"The corner shop just up the street was run by the Coombs family, and it was to them that we took our accumulators to be charged for our radios. Next up from the shop, The Beehive pub was often a bustling place.

"Another local character, known to us only as Peg Leg, also lived at the top of Tallow Hill. He was just like Long John Silver because his false leg was of the wooden screw-in type, but in reality he was a very miserable man."

The Mortuary may originally have been a quiet cemetery but the war years brought intense activity to it and it was used for a whole range of purposes. Five air-raid shelters were placed on it, and Midland Red buses were sometimes parked there as an emergency measure so they would be out of harm's way from potential bombing.

The Auxiliary Fire Service also descended from time-to-time for practices with stirrup pumps and buckets.

"Obviously, we grew up quickly in those days at Tallow Hill, but for us as kids they were marvellous times, especially during the summer holidays. It was brilliant - the whole of Worcester was our playground, and we could watch Spitfires, Lancasters and even the occasional German plane flying overhead.

"Luckily, only one bomb ever fell on Tallow Hill, despite its close proximity to Shrub Hill Station which was quite extensive then and doubtless a prime enemy target. That particular bomb missed the station and hit the side wall of the main administration building at the Workhouse. It's now a mosque.

"A gaping hole was left in the wall, and lots of windows in the building and also of houses opposite were blown out, but fortunately no-one was seriously injured.

"It's doubtful if the Germans knew, but all the guns and ammunition of the local Dad's Army were stored in front of Shrub Hill Station and also many hundreds of spare gas masks to be handed out to citizens in a major emergency. Shrub Hill Station had huge marshalling yards with many steam locos and was a really thriving place with hundreds of people around."

Bob and Tommy also made occasional sorties into Perry Wood to pick bluebells which they sold at 6d a bunch to customers of The Beehive pub. They would also collect cherry blossom to raise a bit of pocket money.

"But it didn't matter if you had plenty of money or very little then, because there was next to nothing to buy in those wartime days of rationing and shortages. We even had to go to Woolworth's to buy hobnails to hammer into our own boots, though we did all seem to have a balanced diet."

This may well have been helped too by the boys occasionally being able to enjoy the odd tidbits from barges carrying goods along the canal at Tallow Hill.

"There were nuts and large chunks of chocolate ingredients for the Cadburys' factory at Blackpole, and Cheddar cheeses for local shops, together with England's Glory matches from Gloucester and coal stocks for local merchants.

"Some of the canal barges were pulled by horses on the towpaths while others had little motors. When it was icy, those big horses had great difficulty in crossing, as they had to, the steep hump-bank canal bridge at Tallow Hill. I remember seeing a number of accidents there involving horses, including those which pulled Co-op milk drays."

Bob also recalls seeing the "beautiful" pair of Shire horses which came with eight men and an ice-breaker barge whenever the canal was severely frozen over.

Tramps going to and from the Workhouse at Tallow Hill were also a daily sight for Bob Whiting as a boy.

"There were hundreds of them using the Workhouse then, staying overnight and having to put in one or two hours' work next day in recompense."

Local wartime factories were also a source of interest to the boys. "Spitfire parts were made at the Rotol Airscrew works at St Martin's Gate, while a whole variety of brushes were produced at the Smith's Brush Works in Pheasant Street.

It was a hell of a big place, and we would see a lot of bamboo being delivered and split by machinery."

Wounded American servicemen also passed through Tallow Hill from time to time. "Ronkswood Hospital was, of course, originally built to treat war-wounded US servicemen including those who had lost arms or legs. In fact, cast iron seats were specially providing all down Newtown Road and even one in Tallow Hill for them to sit on as they struggled on crutches to get in and out of town."

Bob says three underground springs have always converged under Tallow Hill where there was also once a big well.

"The land over the three springs caved in during the 1950s, and Charlie Eden and his company were called in to fill in the hole with bricks."

Bob recalls that the New Inn on the opposite side of the canal from Tallow Hill, was always a very busy pub and that the "local bobby" was a PC Blagg, who lived in St Paul's.

The annual November Fifth bonfire was also a memorable event in the Tallow Hill calendar back in Bob's boyhood.

"It was as big, if not bigger than those at Pitchcroft these days. We used to collect stuff for it for at least a month beforehand, and Bonfire Night was a great time."

According to Bob, his friend Tommy Atkinson seemed to have "nine lives." While clambering over a fence to go "minnowing" in the canal, he was savaged by a big Bull Mastiff dog kept at Cravens' Bakery and was lucky to escape with only severe leg wounds.

"On another occasion we went to collect pigeons by climbing up inside St Andrew's Spire - you could then via a corner stairway - but Tommy somehow fell out of the centre of the spire and crashed down quite a long way to the ground. We stayed up for about 15 minutes fearing he was dead, but when we got to the ground, he was sitting up laughing, though covered in blood.

"It turned out that he had fallen on top of a number of pigeons stuffed up the inside of his coat. They had cushioned his fall, and it was their blood covering him. He had escaped totally uninjured!"

Tommy Atkinson still lives in Worcester, and meets up occasionally with Bob, no doubt to chat over memories of those boyhood days. Bob's brother John Whiting, whose working life was spent mostly with Auto Tyre & Battery at Worcester, died two years ago, but his other brother, Monty, has lived in Australia for the past 30 years.

Bob Whiting's schooldays began at St Paul's but he moved to St Peter's School in 1946, when he went from Tallow Hill and his Aunt Daisy's to live for about eight years with his maternal grandmother, Mrs Margaret Staite, in Sidbury.

Bob's working life has seen him in "all sorts" of jobs, "able to tackle most things". He was a landscape gardener, one of the riveting team who worked on the erection of the gas holder at Ronkswood, he undertook painting and decorating, handled the confectionery side of the business of the Milk Maid Bakery in Sidbury, and also pursued his artistic talents as a painter, carrying out art work.

He considers himself "a bit of a local historian", able to remember all the shops that in times past lined streets in the historic heart of Worcester.

Bob's Grandfather Whiting was for many years agent for the Hindlip Estate and lived at Court Farm, Hindlip, where Bob's father and uncle and aunts were all born.

Bob's great- grandfather Whiting had been butler to Lord Hindlip - but perhaps more of this side of the Whiting family history will emerge in a subsequent Memory Lane feature.

n What I have never seen and would dearly like to trace is a photograph of Tallow Hill when The Mortuary and its gravestones was still the centrepiece.

If any reader knows the whereabouts of such a photograph, I would very much like to see and borrow it for reproduction in Memory Lane. Please contact Mike Grundy at the Evening News if you can help!

n The late Bill Gwilliam in his book Old Worcester - People and Places, explained that a cemetery and "small mortuary chapel" existed at Tallow Hill from 1815, though burials ceased there in the 1860s when local benefactor William Laslett gave a gift of land at Astwood, for a new city cemetery. A dwarf boundary wall around the Tallow Hill cemetery and the walls of the mortuary chapel survived until the 1920s, though gravestones remained in place until much later.

Back in 1832, the north-west corner of the Tallow Hill cemetery opposite the Beehive pub was used as a mass grave for Worcester victims of the cholera epidemic, though all trace of this soon disappeared.