Historical Studies Articles

When discussing "Leader Williams" in a father-son context, the most prominent figures belong to a notable 19th-century British family from Worcester. The family name evolved as individual members became famous in their respective fields of art and engineering, painters including John Constable, Thomas Sanders and William Taunton to say a few.

Edward Leader Williams (1802-1879), the father was the Engineer in charge of the Severn navigation improvements in the 1840s, which saw the building of the locks and weirs from Lincomp to Gloucester. It was a fine piece of civil engineering which made that part of the Severn one of the best navigable rivers in the country.

Although an engineer by trade, he was a talented amateur artist and a close friend of the legendary landscape painter John Constable.
Influence: He encouraged his sons to sketch and paint, often taking them on trips along the River Severn, which heavily influenced their later careers. Constable often stayed with Leader William's and also Thomas Sanders which he sketched a beautiful view looking towards Worcester City from Thomas's home.

Constable exhibited at the Worcester Institute and in October 1835, he gave three lectures at the Worcester Athenaem Exhibition which William Taunton was a committee member. It seems that he only sold one painting here and for a small amount. Having so many unsold pictures with him he asked Leader Williams to hang some in his dining room at Diglis House, the family home. Among those were the Glebe Farm, The Lock on the Stour, and others now in the various Art locations including the National Gallery........

Gheluvelt Park in Worcester commemorates the 1914 Battle of Gheluvelt, where the Worcestershire Regiment halted a German advance. Opened in 1922...

Bill recalls when he was about 12 years old, he had a school friend called George, who lived in a house built on the foundations of the old City Bridewell prison, at the bottom of Copenhagen Street, and through this connection, he saw much of the life in that part of the City. George's father, Mr. Blissett, was secretary of the Plough Inn Fishing Club, and Bill and his friend had privileged positions, they took part in the activities of the club, though strangely, when Bill reflected back he came to the conclusion that there was not a thing to do with fishing....

The hunt ball at the Shirehall was the high point of social life in Worcestershire at the turn of the 19th century. All the county nobility were there, and the company included 'all who was anyone', and numbered 4378. It was the fashionable function of the year and no money was spared to create a setting to show off the brilliant jewels and dresses, and the scarlet uniforms of the hunt. The Worcester Herald of January 18, 1896 reported the scene at some length.....  

In olden times, the High Bailiff and the Low Bailiff alike, were expected to give an annual feast, and when the Mayors came into existence nearly four centuries ago they improved upon the ancient traditions. On every occasion they made merry, no matter whether it was a Coronation, or the death of the King, whether it was a funeral or the discussion of bye-laws about the size of quart pots (946 ml). The feast was officially recognized as part of the long tradition.....

It is known that a building on the Shelsley Side of Woodbury Hill existed in the late 19th and early 20th Centurys, which was owned by Dr Barnardo's. On old maps it is shown as the reformatory, but the locals always spoke of it as 'The Home'..... 

Two English settlers, Daniel Gookin and John Eliot, settled among the native Indians on Packachoag Hill (which is now more or less in the middle of Worcester), and in 1674, Gookin ought bfrom the Indians a tact of land eight miles square, and paid for it 12 pounds of the lawful money of New England. In token of good faith, two Indians who...

Worcester City and County contributed 14 persons to the founding of Pennsylvania, plus an unspecified number of children and servants. There were five Finchers, three Beardsleys, R.Toomer, George Mares, John Price, Seemerry Adams, Hannah Smith, and William Bronton of Dudley. This note deals mainly with Francis Fincher.

There were four branches of the Fincher family in the county, at Shell, Himbleton (where the name is still known of the historic family), Worcester City, and Upton Snodsbury. Francis Fincher, who was a glover and skinner, is the one who dominates. He is described in the American documents as being at 'Kinton', but he is thought to have been born at Himbleton, and to have spent the latter part of his life in Kington....  

Worcester City employed a Crier who carries a silver topped staff, and walks a pace or two ahead of the mace-bearers when the Mayor and Corporation process. However, it is many a day since his traditional cries were last heard in the streets of Worcester...

The Holy Well at Henwick was an exceptionally fine spring which in medieval times had been piped to the cathedral and which the prior had used in the baths he had erected for the monks on Holywell Hill (in return for the transference of St. John's tolls to the Worcester bailiff in 1461) The water was credited with possessing curative properties for the eyes, and was extensively used for that purpose. The lead pipes which conveyed the water to the cathedral were pulled up by the Parliamentary troops during the siege of Worcester and used for bullets....... 

In the 1850's, Barbourne Terrace was a medley of Georgian villas and gravel pits. In the late 1850's one especially good house was built in Barbourne Terrace for Thomas Chalk by Henry Day. Henry Day loved towers, and this particular building is of ........... 

The area west of Bilford Road belonged to the Blanket family until the close of the War of the Roses, when for five generations it was in possession of the Freres. After the late Elizabethan period it was passed through .........

The manor house of Timberdine, a half-timbered building erected by the Mitton's over 300 years ago, lies almost opposite the Ketch Inn. The building today is partially late 19th century, and has been converted into a restaurant.  The ancient priory manor had been a key position at the battle of Worcester, extending from Duck Brook as far as the Ketch Ford....                                                                    

The City has had a number of gaols including near the Trinity Gate/Queen Street, first known record is dated 1540, which was one of the smaller gateways within the City wall and had a Gaol Tower, is was a postern gate leading from the City towards....  

It is not known whether the City walls were built on the site of the Anglo-Saxon defences, but the first mention of them is in 1231, when Henry lll allowed the Bailiffs to..

None were destroyed or removed after the 1651 battle. Foregate was the first to go in 1702-3. Sidbury Gate in 1768, and St. Martin's in 1787. At or near St. Martin's Gate was a small ..

Until 18c, the carpenter was most important in the building of Worcester, but then gave way to the mason and bricklayer, just putting in parts of roof timbers. The City Corporation helped with grants to rebuild the churches damaged in the Civil War. Worcester became.. 

In the 13th century the Benedictine Order taxed their foundations in England to establish a college at Oxford. In 1283, John Gifford of Brimsfield made a presentation to the Gloucester community of a site of what is.. 

Walcott's Memorials of Worcester, 1866 records the following:

The High Cross (defiled 1529); The Grass Cross (demolished 1578), The Sanctury Cross in Cathedral Yard, Whitesone Cross and wayside crosses on.. 

Prince Arthur was laid to rest on the night of April 26, 1502 in Worcester Cathedral. The legend inscribed on the four sides of his marble-topped tomb in the new Gothic style typeface used by..

The City authorities were bound by an Act of Henry VIII (33.19) to maintain a place for archery practice, and to train the City levies in the use of the bow. This required a place where the butts could be ...

Thomas Shewringe was the celebrated Mayor of Worcester, who with the members of the Corporation, accompanied King James ll to the door of the Roman Catholic Chapel, but declined the invitation to attend Mass in their...

In 1864. John Wheeley Lea endowed an almshouse in Infirmary Walk for six poor women, and adjoining, defrayed the cost of erecting a school for St. Nicholas parish. The cost was around £2,000, The six houses were in a charming gothic ...

Another hospital or almshouse near the Tything were the Hebb's Charity for 'decayed members of the Council and their widows'. The houses were at the back of Albany Terrace. Dr. Christopher Hebb, an eminent.....

Edwin Lee's found that in Cary's Map of Worcester, the hamlet of Trotshill, near Elbury Mount was then shown as Toothill.

Toothills are rounded hills rising beside ancient trackways, and were pre-Roman places of ..

In the Foregate is the Berkeley Hospital, founded by Robert Berkeley of Spetchley. In his Will of 1692, he left £2000 to....

The care of the aged who were without friends or resources was fully provided for in the Middle Ages by numerous 'hospitals', which were not then , as later they became, places where the ....

The curfew bell at St. Helen's was rung nightly without a break until 1939, when the ringing of bells was the official warning that enemy parachutists had landed. The parish had a ...

Bull Baiting was from medieval times to the 19th century, an English pastime. John Noake quotes authority for statements that at Worcester, it was a recognized duty of the Mayor to secure.....

For centuries the street called Tybridge Street was the principal entrance into Mid-Wales, and consequently it was the scene of many bloody affrays with the Welsh and other medieval armies needing to use the ......

The Holy Well at Henwick was an exceptional fine spring, which in medieval times had been piped to the Cathedral, and which the Prior had used in the baths which he erected for the use of the monks on Holywell Hill, in return....

A relic of Victorian philanthropy stood in Henwick Road. In more more modern times was used as the Y.M.C.A hostel until 2021, then sadly demolished to make way for new homes. The original building was very large and costly, and though institutional inside, the exterior proclaimed proudly the good work which was done.

When the plague died down no more burial were permitted at the Angel Street site. The cemetery was permanently closed lest any disturbance of the tainted soil might liberate germs of the deadly pestilence. Hence the land was kept as an open space, and in the days of street ........

Today, it is hard to believe that before 1899 the citizens of Worcester had not the privilege of roaming at will over Pitchcroft. 

Pitchcroft was owned by several people and there were no boundaries to the various properties, so they were not distinguishable but could only be delineated on the Tythe Map. There had always been footpaths giving access to ferries, which had been used for so long that the public had acquired the right to pass along them during what was termed the 'closed season'. The acquiring of the croft for public recreation was achieved by many steps against dogged and fierce opposition.

At the bottom of Angel Street was the Old Sheepmarket. It was an open space until 1920 when the present roofed structure was built, although built in since. Traditionally, it was the site of the plague pit, Bill Gwilliam  recalled how the piers for the roof was constructed and a mass of bones removed when the foundations were dug out...

The first public lavatories for women in Worcester were erected in land off Little Angel Street. After some years of compaigning, with appeals from the Brotherhood and Sisterhood of Worcester in 1913, they were eventually erected 1915, but were mot open on Sundays.

The story of Mrs. Henry Wood is one of the great success stories of the 19th century. She was born during the great frost of 1814 and a century later 6,000,000 copies of her books had been sold (not counting pirate copies and her huge contribution to magazines).

She was born Ellen Price at 18 Sidbury (called Danesbury House but rebuilt in 1889). Her father was Thomas Price, one of the largest glove manufacturies, who lived near other glovers in Sidbury (Burlingham was at 23 and Dent at 26). Up to the age of seven, she was brought up in her home of her grandmother, but when the latter died she went to live with her father at St. Mary's Terrace, London Road. She was married in Whittington Church to the head of a large banking firm in India and left Worcester, only returning some years later to consult Henry Douglas Carden, the great Worcester surgeon. She suffered from spinal trouble and used a reclining chair to write. Just before her death, she was writing 'Oswald Cray ' and broke down in health as soon as it was finished........  

It was founded by Bishop Wulstan at the end of the 11th century for a master, four brethren and a chaplain. The establishment was at once religious and charitable, one of the houses outside the walls (like Oswald's) which catered for the reception of wayfarers who arrived after the city gates had closed at night and who otherwise would have had to sleep in the open. It was never connected with the Templars as some have thought, and the name, Commandery, probably derived from the title of a former lay superior.

In 1746 a parish workhouse was set up in an old half-timbered building in St. Peter's Street. It existed well into the 20th century. Parish records show the kind of treatment the less fortunate met. In 1739, for instance; Leonard Darke was to have 'the badche put on his sleeve before the churchwarden relieves him or his wife', a reference to the enforced practise of wearing a large 'P' badge on the arm to show a person was in receipt of parish assistance.....

The site of the present city was tidal and swampy, ut the ford by the high ground, where the cathedral now stands, was of great importance, for here was the first sure crossing of the tidal river for many a mile. Sometime before AD655, a small mission church was built within the former Roman enclosure and houses and merchants clustered around. Later, alongside it, was built the first cathedral and in 680 Bosel, a monk from St Hilda's Abbey in Whitby was sent to become the first Bishop of Worcester .......   

The beginnings of Worcester date from the Bronze Age when, some two thousand years before the birth of Christ, the first settlers arrived; but these were not on the banks of the Severn ut on the high terrace east of the city between Elbury Mount and Crookbarrow Hill. The high ridge still shows circles and squares where once stood early settlements - from Elbury Mount in the north, which retained its defensive terraces until the 1850s, to Crookbarrow in the south, with its steep sides making a defensive mound or lookout, man-made on a natural hill. Cuggan, or Round Hill, at Spetchley commanded the east, and the entrenchments on the precipitous western side of Red Hill (later used by Cromwell).........

Blind man reading Braile near the Watergate c.1900

Fair booths on Pitchcroft about 1880, showing the elaborate painted canvas fronts and small mechanical organ. An original print found in the loft of the British School marked School Photographic Club

Worcester Evening News Remembers Article 13th Feb 1993

Stamping out infection took on drastic proportions at Worcester in 1905 when the city council deliberately devastated an historic house .. by setting it ablaze.....

High up on Tunnel Hill stands a house on the highest part of the road with 'observatory' windows on the top floor. In the 1800's it had a huge telescope fixed in the windows and many tales were told of the power of the instrument:

In 1913, a Society called the Worcester Tenants Ltd, bought eleven acres of land from Christ Church, Oxford, just off Tolladine Road, on the south side which then, apart from the Railway works, was in completely rural meadows and hills..... 

Brickfields Estate was the property of Richard Spooner, an eccentric. He was M.P for North Worcestershire, and partner in the Banking house of Attwood and Spooner of Birmingham..

The Priory Ferry, or Cathedral Ferry, worked until the mid-20th century. It had originally been established for the convenience both of monks and milk-maids, who would otherwise have had to be taken the circuitous route through the City to the Severn ridge at the bottom of Newport Street, for there was no riverside walk as there is today. 

The religious revival that came with church reform brought great changes in public worship. One of the influences for church reform came from the young men of the Oxford Movement, to whom the doctrine and ceremony of the early church were a precious heritage....

In 1863, the Worcester Chronicle published the startling announcement that one of the great bells of Worcester Cathedral, weighing five cwts, had recently been stolen, 'it was not known how or when but it must have been within the last few months'.

In Walpole's Lord Orford's letters, there is a note about a Worcester lady, who believing that her dead daughter yet existed and might communicate with her as a singing bird, had cages of birds put with her in her pew in the Cathedral, hoping they might attract her.

Immediately north of the main entrance to the Cathedral, at a site where now the roadway widens before the North Porch, stood the Chapel of the Charnel House.........  

The ruins in the College Green are part of the Guesten Hall, built in 1320, which formed part of a chain of monastic buildings on the south side of the Cathedral......

The Council of War - James ll Rebuffs the Bishop - The Bishop Locked Out

Until the year 1842, the Old Palace was the official residence of the Bishop of Worcester. He also had Hartlebury Castle and a London House, but a Royal Commission looking into the Church Revenues with reforming zeal, concluded that the Bishop had no need for two palaces, and reduced his income.

Edgar Tower was, until the late 19th century, known as St. Mary's Gate, was the main gate to the royal castle and priory..... 

Eatons Concise History of Worcester, ends the account of the opening of the tomb with this macabre story: 'On the opening of the Tomb of King John in the Cathedral, a gentleman of this city took a hand-full of the skeletons of skins of maggots that were in and about the abdomen of the body and angled with them in the Severn, and absolutely caught a brace of bleak with them'. 

The King's tomb was moved in to a new location in the Cathedral  which in doing so destroyed the very reason for it being there at all. The last restoration in 1874 was done by the Board of Works, who are responsible for all the royal tombs, and insensitively destroyed the remnants of colour that remained and gilded the whole figure, placing on it's head a tin crown.

Arthur, Prince of Wales, the son of Henry Vlll, was as a boy of eleven, betrothed to Catherine of Aragon, of the same age, in a Machievellian attempt to control foreign affairs of state. Two years later, they were married by proxy, the ceremony on Arthur's side taking place in the chapel of Twickenhill Palace at Bewdley on Whit Sunday, 1449. Catherine came to England two years later, and she and Arthur both 15, were married in St. Paul's Cathedral, and went to spend their honeymoon at Ludlow Castle. At the end of two months, on April 2nd, 1502, Arthur died.

The body was embalmed and a great procession brought the young prince to Worcester Cathedral for burial. It was one of the greatest  scenes of pomp and ceremony ever witnessed in our Cathedral, and one of the most moving. The chronicler wrote:

"but to have seene the weepinge when the offringe was done, he had a hard heart that wept not".

Two important royal tombs can be seen in Worcester Cathedral. That of King John, believed to bear the earliest royal effigy taken from life, and that of Prince Arthur, the eldest son of Henry VIII, often said to be the most beautiful tomb of all British Cathedrals.

On January 16th, 1540, the Priory of Worcester came to an end and after 580 years of occupation by the Prior and monks, the monastic buildings and estates were surrendered into the hands of the King.

The shrines of Oswald and Wulstan were the most popular of the Midland religious shrines in the 13th and 14th centuries. The great re-building of the Cathedral in the 13th century, the choir and Lady Chapel, were made possible by the fame of the Saints of Worcester.

The croft nearest the City walls (roughly the land cut off by the railway viaduct) was called Little Pitchcroft. It was taken up by the Cattle Market and other buildings, but not before there was considerable violence to stop the loss of what regarded as the citizen's common land.

The years following the wars with Napoleon were times of great distress among the poor. Charitable people opened soup kitchens in Bull Entry and Bank Street. The Bull Entry kitchen was established in 1817, with specially made equipment that made an average 15,000 quarts daily, and it was said could make three times as much if needed. 

From time immemorial the Prior and the monks of Worcester (the forerunners of the Dean and Chapter) were exempt from municipal authority. This was confirmed  y Henry VI, who in the year 1400, ordained that : 

The privileges of Sanctuary were granted to the Cathedral in 712. The area of the Sanctuary formed a circuit around the Cathedral, coming up from the river at Water Gate, between College Green and the site of the old Castle (now the King's School) including the north side of Edgar Street (which was called Knoll's End), across Sidbury to Lich Street, running up the south side of that street, and so down between the Bishop's Palace and the Cathedral to the river.

Worcester was the first ford, coming up the Severn, at the head of the tideway which was not unduly affected by the tide, but equally important, there was sharpe rising ground which provided a place of comparative safety for those using the ford.

Oswald became Bishop of Worcester in 961, at the time of the Danish raids, and when Christian life was well nign impossible. He saw the solution in the revival of monastic life, the monasteries being refuge where men could flee from the lawless and sensual world, and from which a Christian by religious discipline could influence the world around.

Worcester was the first ford, coming up the Seven, at the head of the tideway which was not unduly affected by the tide, but equally important, there was sharp rising ground which provided a place of comparative safety for those using the ford. This rising ground which Willis Bund called 'the Tump', is that on which the Kings School, Cathedral and the Old Palace now stand.