I’m just back from visiting my daughter for a couple of days. She lives in Worcestershire, about a 20-minute drive from the county’s capital, Worcester. We’ve never been into the city itself much in the years she’s lived there, but now 6-year-old grandson Rufus attends one of the Pauline Quirke Academies for a drama class on Saturday morning, it provided a excellent opportunity to explore the city a little more – in fact, a whole three hours!

There was a lot of evidence of the recent downpours of heavy rain on our journey and as we entered the city, we could see the river flowing under the bridge we were about to drive over was so high, it was doubtful even a rowing boat could pass under it. Thus there would be no walks along the towpath by the side of the River Severn, as we’ve done before, that day. The towpath and land by the side of it was under water.

The drama class is held in King’s Worcester School, a public (i.e. private) school, which was founded by King Henry VIII in 1541 and is situated right next to the cathedral.

After dropping Rufus off, we started making our way to the centre of the town, taking a look at the back of the cathedral from College Yard.

The cathedral was originally founded in 680 and parts of the current building date from 1084. We didn’t go inside, though have done before. It’s a stunning building with beautiful stained-glass windows, a cafe in the medieval cloisters and a number of famous and important people are buried there, including King John and Prince Arthur Tudor – Henry VIII’s older brother who died young, thus the throne passing to Henry. (I wrote more about this when we went to Ludlow earlier this year – click here.)

From College Yard we walked down the narrow pedestrian street, College Precincts.

This is where the famous composer Sir Edward Elgar (1857-1934) lived at No.2 (photo below). Born in the small village of Lower Broadheath just outside Worcester, he spent most of his life in city. Composer of the Enigma Variations amongst many other well-known pieces, he is most famously known for his glorious Cello Concerto, which is one of my favourite pieces of music. Elgar is one of the great and most celebrated former residents of the city.

At the far end, just by Elgar’s house, you can see the front entrance of the cathedral. At the moment it’s surrounded by quite a bit of building work and equipment so I didn’t take a photo.

We crossed over to the main shopping area opposite the cathedral. This is a delightful maze of buildings and little courtyards, where you can enjoy seeing some wonderful Tudor buildings.

To the left in the photo above is Greyfriars, a Grade I listed house and now part of the National Trust. It’s a late medieval merchant’s house that was built about 1490. You can see the other Tudor buildings in the street and I couldn’t resist taking a photo of this rather fairy-tale like ‘collapsing’ house just a little further on from Greyfriars.

You could only visit Greyfriars as part of an hour-long guided tour and that didn’t really fit with our plans. We did, however, head into the attached cafe.

Although the sun was shining and sitting outside was a tempting option, we decided it wasn’t quite warm enough so headed inside. We were early, getting there just after they opened at 10am. I had a coffee and Nicola a tea.

Next we decided to go to the Worcester City Art Gallery & Museum. Nicola hadn’t been before so it was a bit of an adventure for both of us.

Housed in a Victorian building near the railway station, I have to confess that we weren’t over optimistic about what we might find there. However, once we’d entered the attractive building and made our way up to the art gallery we were pleasantly surprised to find a lovely gallery full of interesting and attractive paintings, largely by local people. The museum offers other interesting things such as the Lea & Perrins Archive. The makers of Worcestershire Sauce, you can see a rare lignite jug which was first used to mix the world famous sauce.

We had about an hour to fill. I decided I needed another coffee and Nicola suggested we went to Good Roots, where I’d been before with her for lunch, and which is also conveniently located near the cathedral and school where we had to go to collect Rufus.

Housed in the old Royal Porcelain Works – Worcester is also famous for its porcelain – Good Roots is a great place for breakfast, brunch, lunch – or just a morning coffee.

I had a flat white and Nicola a smoothie, which was very delicious – I was given a little to taste.

   

I wanted a little to eat and chose some toasted sourdough with marmalade – which we ended up sharing.

It was a nice place to sit and chat before we headed off to collect Rufus. What a lovely morning it had been! Then it was back to the car and a drive home to a sunny afternoon in the beautiful countryside in which their house sits.