PERSHORE AT PLAY  (1)
Dr Bob Davis.

I have a story to tell

I’m Bob Davis and, several years ago, I made a research study of PERSHORE and other towns to establish how the people occupied their free time, particularly as it concerned physical recreation and sport.

I knew that for the wealthy members of Victorian society, there was hardly any limit to their free time and their wealth and access to carriages took some of them to all parts of this country and indeed all parts of the world.

An emerging force of middle class male citizens, quite clearly aspired to send their children to good schools and engage in the social activities, which had been exclusively the preserve of the gentry.

Thirdly, the industrial revolution had caused a shift of the labouring classes from the countryside to the towns and with it a forced adoption of a work ethic, where free time and sporting activities were hard won.

Sounds pretty hard going doesn’t it, but when you know that some of these people were your own relatives and that some old people still remember what their parents had told them, the study becomes a tale which deserves to be told.

And so this knowledge could not be just for myself, but belongs to the people in our town, and so I’ve written this short book called Pershore at Play.  

· What happened in Pershore for a thousand years? Hey that takes us back to the establishment of the Abbey and the Great Fair.

· What has happened in the last 150 years? My great grandfather helped start the Working Men’s Club in the town and its fishing club.

· Who of the older ones of you can remember when Pershore really did have a Flower Show?  

All this is a part of our heritage, which we not only have the right to now, but the need to understand with pride.

For any of you who are new to Pershore, part of you belongs to us now, but you’ll also become aware that your own birth town will have had many similar developments and experiences, and I hope that I have expressed some of these in this book.

Pershore has four key features: the River Avon; Bredon Hill; the Abbey; and meadows to play games on. As a result my story has four parts, each, in its own way, allowing the people of Pershore to express themselves joyfully.

So, today, I’ll cover the first of these which is:

Pershore, the River Avon, the Great Old Bridge and the town waterfront as it concerns the people at play.

If you stand on Pershore Great Old Bridge, it’s easy to sense the power of the river, but also its function as an artery, which encouraged a settlement and gave food and protection. Even today, some of you may remember the gun emplacement at the foot of Wick Hill during World War II.

Let’s go back in time for a moment. Pershore was a Roman fording place long before the bridge was built; and hills, yes, Wick Hill and Pensham Hill, were too steep for horse-drawn vehicles and so the Old London Road went through Pershore, but it also went through Wick and you may have journeyed to Bredon Hill over Pensham Hill,  but in the early days the road would have followed the river through Pensham to get to Comberton.

Well, it’s good to tell my Evesham friends that the old London Road didn’t even go to Evesham!!

From a ford to a bridge and the story of the Royalists, who blew themselves into the river. It’s a well known story. Many were drowned and here is the lesson for all of us. Our river is a great joy, it protects and gives us so many recreational opportunities, but it also kills. My mind still returns to a winter 65 years ago, when Lionel Mumford, an Abbey choir boy with myself and Eric Westcott, fell into the flooded river and was gone. It was some time before his body was found beyond the new bridge.

So, there’s good and bad in the Pershore story and so let’s look at another sad piece in this jigsaw, which few people seem to even know about any more. A perennial question has been, why has Pershore appear to have turned its back on the river?  Oh, we still have the meadows up to Wyre Mill, but no access from the Old Pershore Mill to the Parish Field, which is where the Leisure Centre is today.  Did the people of Pershore really have no access to their own river as it ran through the town?  Worcester, Evesham, Tewkesbury and Stratford all had a waterfront, so why not Pershore?  Surely the river belongs to the town and, anyway, the banks flood in the winter, so you can’t build on them, surely!!  

The true story is that it was taken from us. From the Angel to the Mill there was once a public road along the river bank, marking the length of the public wharf, which served the town with barges of wool and wood, corn and coal. Maybe it was because we only had one bridge, where Evesham had two.

Well, 200 years ago, we did have a similar waterfront with access from Shore Street, every bit as effective as Avonside in Evesham. Unfortunately, commerce declined in the 1860’s and Pershore wharf was closed. Sadly, it was but a stone’s throw for the wealthy house owners on the river side of Bridge Street to extend their gardens to the river bank. Call it enclosure or encroachment, the public right of way was gone and access was limited to the pubs on the river bank, like the Angel, the Star, and the Brandy Cask. Oh, and the Maiden’s Head, which has long since been destroyed, and,  if you’ve heard Janet Daniels’ story about the pubs of Pershore, you’ll know that, I could have added the King’s Head and the Black Swan. All of them served Bridge Street in front and Shore Street behind.

Well I’ve got that off my chest, let me quote a verse from one of the oldest chronicles in England, Piers Plowman, much of it written on the slopes of the Malvern Hills.

Take two strong men in Teme cast them
And both naked as a needle, the one sicker than the other
The one hath cunning and can swim and dive
The other is lewd of the labour, learned never to swim.
Which truest of these two in Teme is most in dread?
He that never dived nor cannot swim
Or the swimmer that is safe if he himself likes.

Have no doubt that what is true of the River Teme is right for the Avon. On a warm day, the boys would bathe and swim; the men would take their soap and towels to the river to wash and sport; and the families would picnic at the riverside.

Did you know there were three fords near the town: Sandlesford, near Wyre Mill, which probably linked Wyre with Wick;  the one at the Old Bridge, of course,  and Lime Kiln Meadow, near  the cemetery, which again, probably linked Cornmore with Pensham. These were the favourite bathing places, because the gravel and sandy bottom was safe and the water was shallow.

However, by far the most popular bathing place was just above  Pershore Old Bridge in the Mill Field. Almost like a gift from Heaven, there was the old ford, where the smallest children could play and paddle safely, and parents could watch them from the withies, we called it The Babbies; twenty yards up, it was deep enough for boys to jump in and yet still bottom, this was The Boys, safe and fun on a hot day; but then came the first big test, The Men’s, and only a magical 20 yards further up stream, but it was deep and risky, as the water flowed through the Mill. But there were diving places here and this was where you had to swim to survive and be a man. We all learnt to swim here, as our fathers had done before us.

However, the final test was to swim down stream the half mile to the Water Gate, which is now sadly gone. With the current sweeping you on, only the best swimmers made it and how they enjoyed the proud walk back through the Weir Meadow.

There were some fool-hardy youths who would dive from the withy trees in the Parish Field or sneak a dive off the diving board at the Angel Hotel. However, I’m sure that you are all well aware that Pershore has one particular beauty spot, one which involves a walk over the bridge, across the Waylands and on to, yes, Pershore Falls, set with the Abbey as its backcloth and a shallow gut for the water to escape. However, it’s the circular pit which is inviting and yet frightening. A shallow sandy entry gradually deepens until, some think a bottomless pit exists in the middle. Local families have always loved this place, but children venture out of their depth at their own risk.

The challenge for me and my older children was to swim up to the waterfall against the rush of the current. To wonder when something brushed against you as you swam, that perhaps you had touched a large carp, which was to idle to move over. To dangerous it is said. Authorities have wired off the falls to prevent people crossing them for fear that someone might slip, but why worry about slipping when you can slide and have fun in the summer months and cross to the other side and the locks and excellent fishing potential? Young men used to dive off the lock gates, to fetch lock-keys which had been dropped into the water by careless people on long boats, but all this is wired up now.

But, let’s not leave the beautiful Falls, yet!  Sure there needed to be total respect for the strength of the current, the depth, and the fantasy that some large pike had brushed past you as you swam. Can you imagine the sheer power of the waterfall itself as the white and green water cascaded down to the rocks below and the strength of the currents pulling you across that dark hole. O.K., I’m being melodramatic and a lot of people have drowned in this place, but always in the winter floods, when the water was cold and no one was around to save them.  It was dangerous and a place for parents to watch and bathers to be good swimmers, but perhaps we are too protective, when climbing trees and swimming in natural surroundings were adventurous experiences and part of growing up.

This was where the girls swam, too, but often farther up the river than us, except, that is, when they were tempted to play on the weir, when the water was low. It’s not readily understood, but the attitudes of the day made swimming an unattractive activity for girls. Mrs Blanche Dufty, who talked to me about her experiences with the River at the end of the 19th century, spoke proudly about Billy Bell, who was a relative of hers and lived next to my grandparents in Priest Lane. She told me how,

‘Billy was a champion swimmer. He used to frighten me to death by diving in and not coming up until he reached the other side’

When I asked her if she swam, she said,

‘Oh, no! Girls didn’t swim, but I nearly drowned a baby once. I used to like to walk a neighbour’s baby and one day I followed my brothers and ended up at the river. The boys, who were having a great time, suddenly heard me squeal as the pram toppled over the edge of the steep bank, leaving me clinging onto it for dear life. Billy reached me just in time and packed me off home.’

She explained to me that a lot of the younger boys used to go to Stockin’ Brook, by Tiddesley Wood, as it was much safer, but all she wanted to talk about was,

‘The many species of flowers, I found. They are all gone, now of course, but my greatest joy was picking flowers, while the boys lit a fire and cooked potatoes and birds’ eggs.’

Ah, well, there was fewer rules then, but on the other hand,  Pershore was very respectable in those Victorian and Georgian days up to the Second World War and the water was getting more and more polluted by then, anyway. Even in Pershore, urchins bathed naked years ago, leading the respectable women at the bottom end of the town, to write to the Journal with the intention of driving them out of sight and that meant bathing at greater risk. As a result, the Lime Kiln Meadow, near the Cemetery, became a bathing place. It was away from reproachful eyes, but dangerous enough for a drowning most years.

We needed a swimming pool, but the town didn’t care enough, and then a group of women, some still alive today, opened a shop in Priest Lane, selling goods to pay for a swimming bath. Years of labour and a large grant gave us our first indoor pool and a chance for children to swim safely in clean water.

O.K. So what did Pershore kids do in the winter. Well if we had a cold spell, the river was normally in flood and so the meadow below Cherry Orchard was always good for a game of Bandy. I know, you wonder what that was. Well it’s the original game of ice hockey before rinks existed. A withy stick from the hedgerow and a piece of ice was all you needed to play a game with as many players as appeared on the day.

There were several very hard winters in the 1890’s and again in the early years of the 20th century. The story is that the ice on the river Avon was so thick that people not only skated on it, but some hardy souls skating all the way to Tewkesbury. An Austin Seven was driven on the Avon at Pershore, at that time, according to my Grandmother and we were all skating and sliding on the river in a very cold winter during the last war.

Alternatively, there was always Marriott’s Bank, now part of the Horticultural College, where we used primitive sledges or trays. My mother used to claim that in her day the gate at the bottom was left open and the target was to get across the road…no way would you survive that today! Pity the College has closed that path!

I’d like to mention boating now, but, sadly, Pershore never had its own regatta. All the other major river towns on the Severn and Avon had one, but not Pershore. You can blame the loss of the waterfront, perhaps; the fact that we’ve never had a grammar school; or that there were no young male rowers in the town, who had been to rowing public schools. The two boys in the Hudson Family, for example,  and the Rev. F.R. Lawson, a young curate in the town, had been to Rugby School, where their focus had been on cricket and rugby.

Tewkesbury, at the confluence of the Severn and Avon, had a major regatta as it was on an excellent stretch of water for rowing and sailing and Bathurst’s Boat Building Co. to hire and sell boats; Evesham had a waterfront and an enthusiastic Smith Family, who owned the local paper; and Stratford, with its growing tourist trade had a sponsor in C.E. Flowers, head of a major brewing firm in the town. With Worcester also having a major Regatta, how could Pershore hope to compete?

No, it was going to be through Pershore Great Fair, the Flower Show and major games that Pershore was destined to make its reputation, but that’s another story.

Well, I did come across a Water Fete in a poster advertising swimming events and rowing races, life saving and diving, and a water polo match. This would have been at the beginning of the 20th century and almost certainly sponsored by the Angel Hotel, through its swimming club, but it appears to have been an isolated event.  

As early as the 1870’s, however, some canoeists from Leamington Spa came down the river and stayed at the Angel, before travelling to Tewkesbury and tackling part of the Severn. The point was that the Avon had locks from the 1660’s and this guaranteed deep water and so we did have steam boats, which carried passengers between Tewkesbury and Evesham, with stops at Pershore at the Watergate and the Angel. There are numerous postcards and photographs of these steamboats, which show how popular these trips were.

An additional local event occurred in 1862 when Messrs Humphrey’s, the well known industrial firm, who owned the Atlas Works, built a metal steamboat called the ‘Bee’ and as they owned what later became Pettifor’s Yard on the High Street, it was convenient for them to launch it from their own bit of water frontage.

Incidentally, all the three pubs in Bridge Street, the Angel, Star and Brandy Cask hired out punts and rowing gigs in the summer. The tradition was to go up to Wyre Mill, where there were several osier islands suitable for picnics. The story is that when Italian prisoners-of-war cut the trees down on these islands during the last war, floods gradually swept the islands away.

Well I’ll finish with a brief word about angling. There were no trout to be caught in the Avon and, as a result, for some fifty years, the Severn Fisheries Board ruled that anglers at Pershore did not have to hold a licence. Great, but the problem lay with landowners, who denied anglers the right to fish from their banks. They either restricted access to their friends or hired the water out to wealthy clubs. In time, only the Parish Field and the Falls was left for individual anglers.

Fortunately, Pershore Working Men’s Club managed to rent the water near Lime Kiln Meadow and they still have this water a century later in the shelter of Tiddesley Wood.

Hope that’s been interesting to you and perhaps I’ll be able to talk next time about Bredon Hill and field sports, oh, and a bit about horse racing. Did you know, for example, that we’ve had three race courses in Pershore?