Worcester and the West of England

If you are going to the area for your holiday, you should combine it with some of the Welsh border country. However there is enough to see in England and each of the three cathedral cities should be visited. If you are around at the time of The Three Choirs festival, for which the cathedrals combine - and alternate the location - and you like choral renderings, you will be pushed to find anything better of that ilk.

Bristol is a much larger city which used to be mainly in Gloucestershire but part in Somerset [and a county borough;i.e. self-governing] Now it is the hub of the small county of Avon. Its numerous sites include Brunel,s suspension bridge over Cliftn Gorge and the historic steam ship 'Great Britain.

Tewkesbury, with its abbey is also well worth a visit. Try to go on the Severn Valley Railway - a fine trip. There are no great mountains around but some of the hills, the Cotswolds and the Malverns, associated with Elgar, give beautiful if easy walking.

The Forest of Dean and the Wye Valley [partly Welsh] are areas not much visited by people from abroad, except those with family links but it is a wonderfully scenic area.

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Not to be forgotten if you are around in Autumn is that here are some of England's best fruit picking areas[particularly apples and plums.] If you are into such things, the Slimbridge Wildfowl Centre is terrific and if you want a bit of history, Berkeley Castle is where Edward the Second suffered what was said to have been a particularly horrible death.

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A car is certainly useful if you want to see much of the area but I am ignorant about the possibilities for public transport.

Obviously in an area as large as this I have not seen everything and there may be other places as good as those mentioned.

There are some fine little places here and, at the risk of attracting hate mail, I will hazard the guess that at least two of them are even more popular than Worcester itself. The first is the village of Broadway, one of the most popular villages for coach parties in England away from the coast. It is certainly a lovely stereotypical village full of the sort of buildings that the English still like to think of as typically English. There is a tower above the village, an 18th century folly which was later the centre of the Arts and Crafts movement. It is now the centre of a country park. I cannot comment on how many counties can be seen from it [14 is claimed] but it does provide a fine view.

The other ultrapopular spot is Bewdley, not only a very lovely town in its own right but also providing a terminus for the Severn Valley Railway to Bridgenorth in Shropshire.

AS for Worcester, I have covered its cathedral and mentioned its terrific cricket ground on another page. In addition the Royal Worcester Porcelain Works merit mention as the home of England's oldest firm in continuous production in the industry and the site of a splendid museum. The other thing in the city worth mentioning is the Commanderie, a lovely Tudor building used later by Charles the Second in his unsuccessful final battle in the Civil War.

Further south Pershore has retained the abbey church though the rest of the abbey was 'dissolved'. This is a building worth a visit. Then there is the place seen by every traveller on the M5 [unless there is bad mist]. This is the lovely Malvern Hills where you can get near the top by car if you want and walk amid scenery which is deemed to be typically English [though I do not find it like any other bit of England] and which is full of paths for easy walking with long range views. Elgar is said to have enjoyed walking here. Many less famous people certainly have. In Malvern itself the church has a very large collection of over 1000 mediaeval tiles.

In conclusion I can say that my principal reason for visiting Worcestershire [as opposed to passing through] has been its facilities for apple and plum picking. This mixes an activity which is pleasant in itself with thrift and some fine fruit! The area around Pershore and Evesham is also reputed for summer fruits, vegetables and flowers.

The SS [steam ship] Great Britain was built in Bristol; in fact she or it occupies its original berth today after being retrieved from the Falkland Islands in 1970.

'Great Britain' was designed by Isambard Kingdom Brunel and launched in 1843. This was a major development on any previous ships; it was twice the tonnage for a start. It is actually claimed to have been the first iron-hulled, screw-driven, steam-powered passenger liner and is a unique survival.

It may have been a steam ship but it was not reliant on steam as there were sails on the basis of six masts to assist or to propel the ship if the steam machinery came a cropper. She was 322 feet long and over 50 feet wide, a veritable monster for her time, and had berths for about 250 pessengers.

At first she was used on the Atlantic crossing as a luxury liner and took from 13 to 20 days on the run. Shifted to the Melbourne run, taking about 120 days for the return voyage. She was used for many years to carry emigrants. She was also used as a troop ship in the Crimean War and for the Indian Mutiny.

By the late 1870s she was not seaworthy for so many passengers and was converted into a sailing vessel for the carriage of coal. her last but one use, the last being her current role as a tourist attraction, was as a coal and wood storage hulk in the Falklands where she provided some of the coal used by British destoyers in the Second World War battle of the Falklands.

Enthusiasts of cricketing history may like to know that she carried the first English team on an Australian tour in 1861.

It costs £6-50 for adults to visit but it is costly to maintain the vessel and to forward plans for its future which include access and lifts for the disadvantaged.

Clifton is an attractive suburb of Bristol on the western [Somerset] side. The river Avon flows through it in a gorge about 250 feet high. The 'Downs' near the gorge are very pleasant and a popular area for children and for taking dogs. However it is the gorge itself which is the real magnet for tourists and there are three major sights; the Suspension Bridge designed by Isambard Kingdom Brunel, the Camera Obscura and St. Vincent's Cave [or the Giant's Cave.] The cave itself is in the side of the gorge near the bridge. It could originally only be reached by scaling the gorge, from the top being nearest, but there is now an underground passage. I can actually remember the great excitement this conveyed when I was a child! Now I think that there is not much other appeal. The view of the gorge is fine - but no better than from the top - and the cave itself is not very big.

The other attractions are more interesting. The Clifton Observatory was originally a snuff millbut washired out in 1828 to be an observatory. The camera obscura installed then is still operational and projects images of the surrounding area onto a white table in a darkened room. I cannot pretend to understand the optics but apparently the method dates back to the 16th century and gives a true image rather than the more common mirror one. The idea of watching people who have no idea that they are being watched does not seem so amazing now as when I first saw it but it retains quitea measure of curiosity value.

Lastly we come to the bridge. I am very ready to acknowledge that I have just looked at it as a historical model of considerable scenic virtue and I owe any further information on it to websites and in particular to the excellent one at this site. Apparently a competition was held for the best design in 1829 by Thomas Telford who would only put forward a design of his own. This led to a fresh competition and Brunel submitted four different designs of which the one chosen was not his favourite. There was then a whole load of trouble with the building and with money and eventually the bridge was not finished until after Brunel's death and then it used recycled chains from one of his other bridges and omitted his plan for spynxes at the top which would have been too expensive. The span of the bridge is 720 feet and it is slightly lower on the Somerset side. Otherwise an optical illusion would make it seem unbalanced!

I can only say that for all its stormy career it is still in use and is one of the best known sights in the area - I think deservedly so even if it is not quite what Brunel intended.

If asked which is the best English cathedral, I should be baffled - I don't think the question is susceptible to an answer without laying down parameters. However if I were asked where Gothic architecture reached its pinnacle of successful development in an English cathedral, I should probably cite Gloucester on account of its superb perpendicular window designs, the lierne vaulting in the south transept and the fan vaulting in the cloisters. It would seem that each of these constituted an innovation and not an imitation.

There is one royal with a bad press, Edward the Second, interred here. He was murdered - in a particularly foul manner it would seem - at nearby Berkeley Castle and several abbeys - as this building then was - refused to admit the body.

Perhaps its royal 'inhabitant' accounts for an abbey church's survival to become a cathedral but it was more likely the acknowledgement by the abbott of Henry the Eighth as head of the church that had most effect.

I should not want to leave the impression that Gloucester Cathedral was built entirely in the perpendicular style. The nave, which certainly has some fine perpendicular work at the top, has some of the most massive Norman columns in the country.

Very few summers pass in England without a TV presentation at Worcestershire Cricket Club's lovely ground and always at some stage the view across the Severn to the cathedral is shown. This vies with Durham as being one of the best cathedral views in England. The approach on foot through the town is less spectacular and in fact much of the exterior is rather ruined by comparatively modern renovation.

The interior, however, contains much of interest. The building was founded by St Oswald in Saxon times [10th century] and the ancient crypt containing his remains is still exstant. Wulfstan became Bishop in the 11th century and was the only Saxon bishop to keep his position through the Norman Conquest, probably on account of political rather thaan religious factors.

Apart from the crypt, the Saxon building was almost entirely demolished to allow for a fine new cathedral to be built, started in the late 11th/early 12th century and having additions up to the 14th when the central tower and the cloisters were constructed.

The most famous [infamous] person to have this as a final resting place is King John.

Hereford is not on the main tourist routes of England for visitors from abroad and is one of our smaller cathedrals. Perhaps it is a mixture of reasons including these that accounts for it being less noted than Worcester or Gloucester.

However Hereford Cathedral is a bit of a connoisseur's piece as it contains brilliant examples of all the main styles of architecture from Norman to Perpendicular.

It is also an interesting fact that Hereford is possibly the oldest see in England, going back to the 7th or possibly even the 6th century.

This is not about A SHOP but about a town, a very small town, Hay on Wye. It is right up against the border with Wales and I have to confess that I originally had placed this, erroneously, in my Powis journal!

Most specialist towns look way back in history for the origin of their specialism; not so Hay. Richard Booth only started what is now his enormous shop in the early 1960s and now Hay has 38 shops selling second hand books.

Some of the shops sell books of all descriptions while others are vigorously specialist. [This is one place where a speciality bookshop does not simply specialise in books.] Everything is available from the cheap second handers similar to what can be bought in any local market up to rare first editions.

Richard Booth's shop is still the biggest in the town - perhaps in the world! - and claims to have over a million second hand books available at any one time. The old cinema building, shared between more than one shop is very well known. Much more can be gleaned by just putting 'hay books' into a search engine. You will find that I am not exaggerating.

Gloucestershire welcomes more visitors, especially those from overseas, than Herefordshire or Worcestershire. The Cotswolds area has always been something of a tourist magnet and its popularity has been increased by its association with Highgrove and Prince Charles. The Forest of Dean is less noted than this, but does attract numerous visitors. Gloucester itself and some of the towns and villages are delightful.

The city of Gloucester is worth visiting, not only for its cathedral covered on another page, but for its historic dockland area and the National Waterways Museum. Cheltenham has some elegant Regency architecture, but is a bit over-elegant for my taste. Stroud and nearby villages, Nailsworth and Painswick in particular, provide splendid views over the Cotswolds, as does the old Birdlip Hill. Cirencester is a lovely town and its Corinium Museum is one of the best in the country for Roman remains while Chedworth contains one of the best Roman villas with excellent mosaics.

Four Cotswold villages are all major tourist magnets--and you will almost certainly be disappointed if you try to stay cheaply in the area. These are: Broadway, Stow-on-the-Wold, Bourton-on–the–Water, and Moreton-in-Marsh. Bourton does have a river in the centre and its bridges are among its major attractions, while Moreton is quite unconnected with marshes, the name being probably a corruption of March [meaning borderland.] It is particularly memorable for its market and antique shops. Both Stow and Broadway are villages to be seen as a whole--wonderful old buildings and wonderfully expensive places, rather than for any more particular attributes.

The Royal Forest of Dean lies between the rivers Severn and Wye and, unlike a number of other areas called forests, is still predominantly woodland. It is historically a most interesting area for its former industries including coal and iron. The town of Newent is probably the best base at least for the northern part of the forest while Lydney with its preserved steam railway [progress still taking place] is good for the south side. Only just outside this area to the east lies the village of Minsterworth with its lovely church and three splendid old yew trees immediately beside the Severn, but the village’s real claim to glory is as a prime site for watching the phenomenon of the Severn Bore, a huge surge wave that occurs several times a month, sometimes sweeping right up to Worcester! Details of times can be seen on www.severn-bore.co.uk

Two final favourites. The Slimbridge reserve of the World Wildlife Trust, founded in 1946 by Sir Peter Scott, a noted bird artist and naturalist as well as being the son of the famous Antarctic explorer. The collection of wildfowl from all over the world is remarkably fine but I am as taken with the migrant flocks of hundreds, literally, of whooper and Bewick’s swans which come every winter. Lastly, there is Berkeley Castle, one of the best Norman castles in England, noted for the particularly foul murder of King Edward the Second.

Although Herefordshire was merged with Worcestershire in the 1970s, anyone will still know whether they live in Herefordshire or Worcestershire. This is a county neglected by overseas tourists and by many Britons. Yet it has a large stretch of the beautiful river Wye, some wonderful old towns and the picturesque villages of North Herefordshire as well as Hay (see books page and Hereford itself whose cathedral is one of the three on the cathedrals page). It is a large county, I do not know all of it and this should be treated as what it is, a selection of places worth a visit.

To start with the Wye downriver from Hay and Hereford, Ross on Wye is many people's introduction to this lovely river - for much of its length forming the border between England and Wales. Ross, reached by the Ross Spur - a motorway off the M5, is an ancient market town rising steeply and looking very picturesque above the bridge.

From here it is easy to reach one of the best known bits of the Wye, Symmonds Yat. This is a beautiful wooded stretch where the Wye meanders round a great bend with Yat Rock forming en exquisite viewpoint from a hill above the valley. Symmonds Yat itself is divided between the two sides of the river and there is a ferry across operated by hand and a rope. It is an unabashed people magnet and the delightful pubs do a roaring trade.

Of the other towns worth visiting I know two, Leominster and Ledbury, and to be honest I get them mixed in my mind as I have not been to either for a bit. I know that timber framed houses occur pretty prolifically and my main, distinct memory of Leominster is antique shops and narrow streets.

Lastly I mention the villages of North Herefordshire, the Black and White villages as they are known. It is even longer since I went around these villages but they are quite a wonderful grouping and there is a drive, the Black and White Villages trail which links them. The timbered houses date from the 16th and 17th centuries but the villages each have distinctive features of their own. The only one I really remember is the coracle making and using at Leintwardine [a coracle is an ancient basketlike river boat]. However the villages are excellently covered on http://www.welcomevillages.org/frame.html