There’s a treat in store for local history enthusiasts this Christmas with a new Worcester Life Stories book out on December 20.
Worcester Life Stories – The Big Quiz Edition is packed with more than 250 historic photos of the city, along with plenty of challenging quiz questions.
Most of the photographs in the book form part of Worcester City Council’s Historic Environment Record and have been taken by council officers in the course of their work over the years, illustrating the city’s changing face from the 1950s onwards.
The 60-page hardbound book has been compiled by Worcester City Council’s Historic Environment Record Officer Sheena Payne-Lunn who co-led the Worcester Life Stories project, which began in 2020 as a collaboration between Worcester City Council and Herefordshire and Worcestershire Health and Care Trust, with funding from The National Lottery.
Just before the project was due to launch, the pandemic hit and changes had to be made, with Sheena and her team using photos from the City Council photo archive to compile online quizzes on old Worcester – and these became a huge hit. A selection of the quiz questions and accompanying photographs have been included in the book.
Sheena said: “Our online quizzes were hugely popular and there was so much interest in the photos which we gathered together – people came forward to share their stories and memories of Worcester in years gone by. We hope that this book will help keep memories of our local history alive – and will be an entertaining read for all those interested in Worcester past and present.”
The book costs £19.99 and will be on sale at Worcester Tourist Information Centre at the Guildhall, the Worcester City Art Gallery and Museum in Foregate Street and The Commandery in Sidbury.
There will be various activities for all the family and there will be the opportunity to hear memories from those who worked for the company.
Did you work for Royal Worcester? Come along and share with us your experience! The team will be there on the day to listen and share some photos with you. If you want to get a sneak peak, check out the community layer for pictures of the site and former workers. You never know, you might recognise someone!
Hopefully everyone had an enjoyable half-term last week! Naomi here, with a little excitement from my week off… I was very lucky to be able to visit the National Archives in Kew, in London, on Thursday. I’ve been researching my grandad’s World War Two records and trying to track down the units he was in.
The National Archives in Kew, London (Author’s own photo)
While I was there, though, I popped into the gift shop (who doesn’t love a little knick-knack to take home?) and happened to see their rather interesting story about the mummified rat they have there! It actually put me in mind of an amusing story I heard when I started working with the HER, to do with Worcester’s power station.
Worcester’s Power Station on Hylton Road, early 1970s
In my first month I stumbled across a photo of some parts in the power station, which I soon realised had a mouse attached to them! Upon showing it to my colleague, Sheena, she told me the story behind the photo. A rather unfortunate mouse had walked into the generator and fried itself, subsequently taking out half of Worcester’s electricity!
The unfortunate mouse!
Previously, I had never known Worcester had its own power station, and it’s only through the work of Worcester Life Stories and Know Your Place that I became aware. (Equally, if you, too, want to know more about the power station, check out Sheena’s blog post on Explore the Past.) The collection of photographs we have is so important for building that picture of Worcester in times past, and we are always on the lookout for unique stories like this one!
The Know Your Place Worcester platform
The Know Your Place Worcester platform is the perfect place for sharing your own photos, or those of your family, which can tell us more about your experiences in Worcester. You can even add audio or video links. We’d love to see and hear them!
I’m at the National Archives!! (Author’s own photo)
Did you come along to our Virtual Time Travel Trail event at the end of October? Here’s our short documentary film produced by Chin Badger Media, sharing some of the highlights from the night and local responses to it. A chance to see some of the event if you didn’t make it on the night as well as to revisit it if you did!
A huge thankyou to all our local venues and volunteers who made this event so special! And a massive thankyou to the Guildhall School of Music & Drama who produced our amazing projections – they were spectacular!
As you may be aware when Know Your Place Worcester was launched earlier this year, it included the fantastic Community Layer, enabling local people to share material from their own collection, such as photographs, memories and knowledge. We have been delighted over the last few weeks to see a wealth of photographic material appearing, uploaded by David White, from his father Alan’s collection. Here David tells the story…
An early selfie by Alan White
“One of the products of the pandemic lockdowns in early 2020 was that many of us had time on our hands. This prompted me to start scanning, restoring and cataloguing my father’s collection of negatives and slides that he took back in the late 1950s… It has been an enormous task which is still ongoing!
My father Alan White was a Worcester citizen and when first married lived in Church Walk near Tybridge Street in St Johns, hence many of the early photographs were taken within easy walking distance including Cripplegate, the cathedral, High Street and Diglis. He later moved in the early 1960s to the Elbury Park area before a move to Northamptonshire in the late 1980s. His photograph collection continued to grow right through to the 1990s, but unfortunately few of the later ones were taken in Worcester.
An evocative image looking out onto College Green on a snowy day in the 1950s
Alan was a keen amateur photographer and he started taking photos in the 1950s. When money was tight in the post war period and having also married and started a family, he still managed to purchase a 35mm camera together with darkroom equipment for developing and printing his own pictures. He entered some of his pictures into local exhibitions and competitions.
Quite a few of the negatives and slides are in need of restoration, I seem to remember that as a child in the 1960s I was allowed to play with them and undoubtedly some damage was done with finger marks, dust and scratches. The colour slides had also deteriorated and many had lost or changed colour. So, after scanning the negatives and slides the resultant files or digital photos were opened into Photoshop where I was able to use various “tools” to sympathetically restore many of them. A few of the black and white pictures have been suitable for being “colourised” to add a bit of atmosphere and detail. A lot of hard work, but well worth it as I have been able to share these images with family members who have never seen them before and also on Know Your Place and various Facebook groups.
The newly built family home, Kirkstone Drive in 1962
It is possible that Alan might be remembered by a few people still living in Worcester. As well as being a keen amateur photographer and gardener, he worked at the Post Office from his teens right through until moving to Northamptonshire. He was a City Councillor in the 1960s and was very active in the Scout Association. My father, now in his late 80s, is absolutely delighted that his photos taken over 60 years ago have been brought up to date and can bring memories, interest and delight to people of all ages.
I hope you have enjoyed finding and viewing the photos that have so far been uploaded to the Know Your Place (Worcester) website. There are many more that will be added over the next few weeks (or months?) ….as soon as they have been restored! So don’t forget to keep visiting the website and exploring the “green diamonds” on the community layer.”
A huge thankyou to David for the amazing contributions he is making to the site – everything from iconic views of the Cathedral to city parks and the Worcester Carnival. And of course a massive thankyou to Alan for his incredible photographs – we are so excited that these can be made available for all to enjoy. Explore the site to discover more!
Know Your Place Worcester 