Trade and Industry Articles

The only Factory School in Worcester was at the Horse-hair Carpet Mill. Children were used to supply hair to the weaver's hand, and they like others working in mills elsewhere, worked long hours for little reward. Yet, Edward Webb had a particular concern for the children, and he provided an evening school and library for some 40 poor female children. After  10 or more......

There was in Copenhagen Street until 1935 the last of the City Carpet Mills, all that remained of a trade which, in George lll's reign had a royal inspection and was considered likely to be the most important in the City's future.

In 1835, Edward Webb, then aged 27, bought a horse-hair weaving factory at 8 Copenhagen Street. The plant had 14 seating looms and 2 looms for cider cloth...............

High Street was for many centuries the street of printers. The first of that craft to practice in Worcester began in 1548. He was John Oswen of Ipswich, which at that time, he had three printers, Worcester being the 9th place in the British Isles to take up the 'art'. Other places ranking in time before Worcester were Tavistock 1525, Cambridge 1521, York 1509, Edinburgh 1507, London and St Albans 1480 and Oxford between 1478 and 1486.  

 

'Uncle' Ben Embling's Sweet Stall in Angel Street at the Worcester Cheese and Hop Fair 19th September 1909

Stalls in Angel Street for the annual Cheese and Hop Fair, 19th September 1909

The most famous of Worcester's drapery and millinery establishments in the 19th century was Victoria House. Its premises was part of the old Hop Pole Hotel, one of the most famous posting establishments in the Midlands.

The Worcester Foundary was in the Blockhouse, on the canal-side. It closed in 1967 after 153 years of business

Well over 100 years ago, a local tinsmith, William Blizzard Williamson, founded a sheet metal works in Providence Street, and called it the Providence Works. It was small but it became the base of operations for Metal Box's biggest money -spinner in the UK

The head of the firm of McNaught & Co., Mr.J.A.McNaught, was for over half a century acively connected with the business life of the City of Worcester. He was born in Kendal, in Westmorland in 1828, his father being a coachbuilde

Skilled potter and teacher, became Professor of Ceramics at the Royal Collage of Art. In 1959 he left that post to join the Board of the Royal Worcester Porcelain, bringing with him some of his most talented colleagues and students

Potter came from a family of potters from Swansea, who came to work at Worcester in the early 19th century. E.W. was apprenticed to George Granger on November 14th, 1845.

The son of a Rector of Comberton, Thomas Turner, apprenticed to the Worcester Porcelain Works at Warmstrey House, introduced the 'Willow Pattern' into England,

1. By the middle of the 18th century 'china' was the fashionable rage throughout Europe. Several attempts were made to emulate the imported porcelain from the Far East, but the approach in England was different to that in France and Germany,

Porcelain manufacture in Worcester started in 1751 by Dr. John Wall and William Davis of this city. The cloth trade on which the city's prosperity depended had declined, and there was a search for new industries.

The early engineers were mostly millwrights and smiths, making and erecting mills and gins (or engines). A famous Worcester engineer named Yarnold,

Roman iron workings in the Severn valley were extensive. The value of iron was great, and often used as currency. In a Domesday survey Gloucester paid tribute in bars of iron. In the Wyche Cutting, Malvern,

Berrow's Worcester Journal of August 15, 1793, announced that 'At Roper's Tea Warehouse, High Street, Worcester, shot is manuafctured, and well-known to be a good article,

W.E.Tucker was a printer of some distinction. It was he who built the large works in Barbourne, (Northwick Avenue), which was later occupied by R.J.Collins, and later by Messrs Kay.Co.

For over 70 years, James Plum, father and son, carried on a cutlers business in High Street. They were among a number of old established residents there who lived over the shop in the old manner.

Glass was at one time made at Worcester in the 17th century, but the maker ended up in a debtors 'prison in London, where he died. In 1739, in the Weekly  Worcester Journal, there was a mention of a glass house (or works) at Worcester.

BWJ of January 8, 1795 reported "The public are respectfully informed that a bank has been opened at No . 16 Mealcheapen Street, near the Corn Market, under the firm of Farley, Wakeman, Turner and F.Spilsbury, where they solicit the favours of their