06-07-2025
The sights and smells of Worcester shopping as it was
I SUPPOSE if you are of a certain generation it could be said when the world of music had Crosby, Stills and Nash in the world of footwear retail one of the kings of the street was Freeman, Hardy and Willis.
Most town centres had a branch and Worcester's was in High Street almost opposite the Guildhall.
Nearby was the slightly less legendary Chung Wah Chinese restaurant.
Having been founded in 1875, FHW's physical presence finally hit the buffers in 1996 and now the Gloucester-based company operates only online.
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It's a sign of the times and if you go back 50 years you find that so much has changed on the shopping front.
The rise of the supermarkets being the main thing.
I can easily recall when my parents began making their weekly trip to something called a supermarket in the mid-1960s.
Every Thursday afternoon they would make the car journey from Callow End in dad's two-tone yellow and white Ford Zodiac to a giant food store where you could apparently buy almost everything and cheaper than the village shop.
Their venue of choice was Fine Fare which stood on the corner of the Bull Ring in St John's.
It was probably Worcester's first supermarket and served the west side of the city while there was another branch in The Shambles.
It was the start of a change and a shift from the more leisurely and intimate shopping style that had gone in the decades either side of the Second World War when there was an abundance of grocery and butchers' shops all over the city centre and on many suburb street corners.
These were places of character with their sawdust-lined floors and their distinctive smells.
Although by today's standards they'd probably attract the attention of the health and safety and hygiene police.
The tangy waft of the cheeses would be OK but not so much customers coming eye to eye with a dead rabbit, a row of naked, plucked poultry or half a chopped-up pig.
Post-war there were numerous family-run businesses right in the heart of Worcester.
Witts, the drapery store at 48 High Street, was run by Aubrey and then son Keith Papps, staunch Rotarians both.
When it closed in the 1960s the site was incorporated into an enlarged Littlewoods.
Down in The Shambles, brothers Stan and Arthur Marshall masterminded Maggs, the gentleman's outfitters where hundreds if not thousands of Worcester parents bought their children's school uniforms.
And what a loss it was when Beards in Broad Street closed at the end of the 60s.
A time warp little food emporium, it was noted for its traditional cheeses, the aroma of which drifted down the street meaning you could smell Beards long before you got there.
Worcester's changed a lot now and not necessarily for the better.
