Old Roads Articles

Cold Comfort & Happy Land

In the mid-19th century popular names had a habit of sticking. 'Cold Comfort' was the name given to a group of cottages in Church Walk (later School Walk) off Tybridge Street. The name was not official but popular, and like Hungerpit Wlk, off Ombersley Road, was thought to have been due to poor soil or absence of amenities. Cold Comfort and Hungry Harbour or Hungerpit are almost as common as Love's Grove. The names were....

The Effect on Road Coaches

The effect of the railways on road coaches in the Birmingham area fluctuated from boom to disaster. Until 1835, six coaches set out daily in each direction to and from Birmingham and Worcester

Alfred Watkins and Salt Leys

Alfred Watkins, famous for his book 'The Old Straight Track' and Ley Lines, gave a lecture to the Woolhope Society in 1922, at which he put forward the view that place-names containing 'White' or a corruption of White, pointed to ancient salt roads or leys.

Toot Hills

Toothills are rounded hills rising beside ancient trackway, which were pre-Roman places of worship, dedicated to Teutates, or Toot. Lees considered Elbury Mount to be a Toothill, and that the ancient track called Porte Fields which ran between Helbury Hill

Travelling On The Old Roads

The old roads were alive with multifarious travellers, and in 1911, an old contributor to a Worcester paper looked back with nostalgia:'The cycle and the motor car have in some measure restored life to our highways, but our modern vehicles cannot invest

A Pre-Historic Track from Bredon Hill to Midsummer Hill

In the Worcestershire Archaeological Society's Transactions of 1936, Edward F. Gray of Ripple Hall recorded an ancient trackway going through Ripple Churchyard, as follows:Bredon Hill and Midsummer Hill were once connected by a track, now partly overgrown

Prehistoric Trackways in Worcestershire

Worcestershire was once part of a large river estuary with the range of the Malvern Hills on the west side, and the hills of Clent and Lickey leading to the Ridgeway on the eastern border. The rivers were tidal to Bewdley at the least, with great areas

Roman Roads

Of the four greatest roads built by the Romans in Britain, only one, the Foss Way, touched the area of modern Worcestershire, and that at the two outlying 'island' parts, which have now been lost to us by the re-drawing of the county borders. The two most

Track across Kempsey Common

An ancient ridgeway track led across Kempsey Common through Kerswell Green to Severn Stoke

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