When you come to the UK, take a second to go to Worcester, because there are many things to do there. Worcester is a city in the West Midlands, Worcestershire, England. With an estimated population of 94,300, is the capital Worcester Worcestershire. Located about 30 miles (48 km) southwest of Birmingham and 29 miles (47 km) north of Gloucester. Severn River flows through the city center and Worcester Cathedral overlooking the city.
The Victorian-themed Christmas Fayre is a major source of tourism every December. Elton John came to the Worcestershire Cricket Ground, New Road on Saturday 9 June 2006. Status Quo came to Sixways Stadium (Worcester Warriors) on Saturday 28 July 2007. Every three years Worcester becomes home to the Three Choirs Festival, which dates from the 18th century and is credited with being the oldest music festival in Europe. The location of the festival rotates each year between the Cathedral Cities of the Three Counties, Gloucester, Hereford and Worcester. Famous for its championing of English music, especially that of Elgar, Vaughan Williams and Gustav Holst, Worcester last hosted the festival in August 2011. The Worcester Festival was established in 2003.
Held in August, the festival consists of a variety of music, theatre, cinema and workshops, as well as the already established Beer Festival, which runs as an event within the Worcester Festival. For one weekend the city plays host to the Worcester Music Festival. Now in its 4th year (2011) the festival comprises a weekend original music by predominantly local bands and musicians. All performances are free, and take place throughout the city centre in bars, clubs, community buildings, churches and the library. In 2010 the festival comprised 230 unique acts. Worcester Festival ends with a spectacular firework display on the banks of the River Severn on the Monday of the August bank holiday.
1. Worcester Cathedral
Worcester Cathedral, before the English Reformation known as Worcester Priory, is an Anglican cathedral in Worcester, England; situated on a bank overlooking the River Severn. It is the seat of the Bishop of Worcester. Its official name is The Cathedral Church of Christ and the Blessed Mary the Virgin of Worcester. Built between 1084 and 1504, Worcester Cathedral represents every style of English architecture from Norman to Perpendicular Gothic. It is famous for its Norman crypt and unique chapter house, its unusual Transitional Gothic bays, its fine woodwork and its "exquisite" central tower,[1] which is of particularly fine proportions. The cathedral's west facade appeared, with a portrait of Sir Edward Elgar, on the reverse of £20 note issued by the Bank of England between 1999 and 2007.
2. Hanburry Hall
Hanbury Hall is thought to stand on the site of the previous mansion, Spernall Hall, and Thomas Vernon first describes himself as ‘of Hanbury Hall’ in 1706, and this and other evidence leads to a likely completion date of about 1706. The date of 1701 above the front door is thought to be a Victorian embellishment, but no building accounts are known to exist. Hanbury Hall was built by the wealthy chancery lawyer Thomas Vernon in the early 18th century. Thomas Vernon was the great grandson of the first Vernon to come to Hanbury, Worcestershire, Rev Richard Vernon (1549–1628). Rev Richard and his descendants slowly accumulated land in Hanbury, including the manor, bought by Edward Vernon in 1630, but it was Thomas through his successful legal practice who added most to estates, which amounted to nearly 8,000 acres (32 km2) in his successor Bowater Vernon’s day.
3. Avoncroft Museum of Historic Buildings
Avoncroft Museum of Historic Buildings is an open-air museum of rescued buildings which have been relocated to its site in Stoke Heath, a district of Bromsgrove, Worcestershire, England. Founded in 1963 and opened in 1967, the museum was conceived following the dismantling of a 15th-century timber-framed house in Bromsgrove in 1962 to provide a location for its reconstruction. It became England's first open-air museum and the second in the United Kingdom. This building is known as the 'Merchant's House' today, though it has been known by other names in the past, including the 'Bromsgrove House' and the 'Tudor House'. It now houses a collection of domestic, industrial, agricultural and other forms of historic building, the majority dismantled and re-erected.
The museum's collection comprises more than 27 buildings and structures which have been relocated from their original sites under threat of demolition, being rebuilt and restored at the museum. This includes a fully functioning windmill and a post WW2 prefab house as used in many towns and cities after the Second World War to provide quick affordable replacements for houses destroyed by bombing. The Arcon V prefabricated house was originally constructed on Moat Lane in Yardley, Birmingham and was transported to the museum in 1981.
4. Porcelain Museum
The Worcester Porcelain Museum is a ceramics museum located in the Royal Worcester porcelain factory's former site in Worcester, England. The museum houses the world’s largest collection of Worcester porcelain. The collections date back to 1751 and the Victorian gallery, the ceramic collections, archives and records of factory production, form the primary resource for the study of Worcester porcelain and its history. The museum is the only part of Royal Worcester left at the Severn Street site in Worcester after the factory went into administration in 2008 and closed in 2009. The Royal Worcester Visitor Centre, the seconds shop and the cafe all closed with the factory in 2009.
5. Snowshill Manor
Snowshill Manor is a National Trust property located in the village of Snowshill, Gloucestershire, England.The garden at Snowshill was laid out by Wade, in collaboration with Arts and Crafts movement architect, M. H. Baillie Scott, between 1920 and 1923 as a series of outside rooms seen as an extension to the house. Features include terraces and ponds. The manor house is a typical Cotswold house, made from local stone; the main part of the house dates from the 16th century. Today, the main attraction of the house is perhaps the display of Wade's collection. From 1900 until 1951, when he gave the Manor to the National Trust, Wade amassed an enormous and eclectic collection of objects reflecting his interest in craftsmanship. The objects in the collection include 26 suits of Japanese samurai armour dating from the 17th and 19th centuries; bicycles; toys; musical instruments and more.
6. Harvington Hall
Harvington Hall is a moated medieval and Elizabethan manor house in the hamlet of Harvington in the civil parish of Chaddesley Corbett, south-east of Kidderminster in the English county of Worcestershire. Harvington Hall belongs to the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Birmingham and is particularly notable for its vestment-hide and seven priest-holes, four of which are built around the main staircase and are thought to be the work of Nicholas Owen.
7. CrownGate Shopping Centre
CrownGate Worcester is a shopping centre in Worcester, England. It contains 60 stores, with a range of both large and smaller units, including anchor tenants House of Fraser, Debenhams and Primark. There are also three restaurants, a large car park with Bus Station and The Huntingdon Hall Theater. The Centre has just undergone an extensive £4million refurbishment and rebranding with new floors, canopies and lights as well as modern street furniture and art.
8. Worcestershire Beacon
Worcestershire Beacon is a hill whose summit at 425 m (1,394 ft) is the highest point of the range of Malvern Hills that runs approximately 13 kilometres (8.1 mi) north-south along the Herefordshire-Worcestershire border, although Worcestershire Beacon itself lies entirely within Worcestershire. The Beacon is highly popular with walkers with its easily reached dense network of footpaths criss-crossing it and the area has been designated by the Countryside Agency as an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty.
9. Great Malvern Priory
Great Malvern Priory in Malvern, Worcestershire, England, was a Benedictine monastery c.1075-1540 and is now an Anglican parish church. In 1949 it was designated a Grade I listed building. It is a dominant building in the Great Malvern Conservation area.[citation needed] It has the largest display of 15th century stained glass in England, as well as carved miserichords from the 15th and 16th century and the largest collection of Medieval floor and wall tiles. In 1860 major restoration work was carried out by Sir George Gilbert Scott. It also the venue for concerts and civic services.
10. Brockhampton Estate
The Brockhampton Estate is a farmed estate in Herefordshire, England, which is owned by the National Trust. The Brockhampton Estate is located near the village of Brockhampton near the town of Bromyard. The main attraction of the Brockhampton Estate is Lower Brockhampton, a timber framed manor house that dates back to the late 14th century. The manor house is surrounded by a moat and is entered by a newly restored gatehouse at the front of the house. The house is surrounded by 1,000 acres (4.0 km2) of farmland and 700 acres (2.8 km2) of woodland. In 2010, the National Trust undertook a major restoration project to the house using traditional wattle and daub building methods. The Brockhampton Estate was bequeathed to the National Trust in 1946 by Colonel John Lutley. The site of the mediaeval village of Studmarsh is thought to be located in the estate. In 2012, an archaeological dig unearthed the foundations of two buildings that may have been part of the village.
11. Spetchley Park
Spetchley Park in the hamlet of Spetchley, near Worcester, England, has belonged to the Berkeley family, who also own Berkeley Castle in Gloucestershire, since it was first built in 1606. Today, in the garden at Spetchley very little has changed since Ellen Willmott’s day. It is a garden of contrasts: there are walled gardens, a melon yard with its original glasshouses, a horse pool, Victorian conservatory, a delightful Root House’, statues, fountains, architectural follies, rose gardens, lakes and bridges, superb herbaceous borders and magnificent specimen trees. A famous regular visitor to Spetchley was the composer Edward Elgar, who had gone to a Catholic school on the estate and in later years stayed at Spetchley many times, living in the Garden Cottage. The pine trees nearby are called "Elgar's Pines" and according to his inscription for his hosts in their copy of the score, they inspired him to write parts of The Dream of Gerontius.
12. Malvern Museum
The Malvern Museum in Great Malvern, the town centre of Malvern, Worcestershire, England, is located in the Abbey Gateway, the former gateway to the Great Malvern Priory. The museum was established in 1979 and is owned and managed by the Malvern Museum Society Ltd, a registered charity. The Priory Gatehouse was a gift to the museum in 1980 from the de Vere Group, the owners of the neighbouring Abbey Hotel, and is staffed by volunteers. As such, the building itself is the museum's major exhibit.
Among the museum's exhibits are many local artifacts and archeological findings dating from the Iron Age hill fort at the British Camp, to recent history. A series of rooms depicts different periods of history and include lifelike displays and information boards. Themes covered include natural history, Malvern Priory, Malvern Forest and Chase, life in Victorian Malvern, Edward Elgar, the Malvern Festival, the history of the local economy including the 19th century hydrotherapy using Malvern water (instrumental in the settlement's rapid growth from a village to a large town), the development of radar by TRE, and Morgan Motor Company cars.
The museum is open daily, 10.30 to 17.00, from 25 March to 31 October (closed Wednesdays except for school visits during term time).
13. Fort Royal Hill
Fort Royal Hill, is in a park in Worcester, England, and the site of the remains of an English Civil War fort.Fort Royal was a Civil War sconce (or redoubt) on a small hill to the south-east of Worcester overlooking the Sidbury Gate. It was built by the Royalists in 1651 to defend the hill, because during the siege in 1646 Parliamentary forces had positioned their artillery on the hill and had been able to severely damage the city's walls.
14. Little Malvern Priory
Little Malvern Priory, in the village of Little Malvern near Malvern, Worcestershire, was a Benedictine monastery c.1171-1537. It was founded from Worcester Cathedral. Little remains of the 12th century church, which was rebuilt in 1480-1482. The site is now occupied by house named Little Malvern Court, which has limited public opening. The present building comprises a medieval chancel and crossing tower, and a modern west porch on the site of the east bays of the nave. The transepts and the two chapels flanking the choir are in ruins. The grade I listed Little Malvern Priory church, dedicated to St Giles, is adjacent.
The Victorian-themed Christmas Fayre is a major source of tourism every December. Elton John came to the Worcestershire Cricket Ground, New Road on Saturday 9 June 2006. Status Quo came to Sixways Stadium (Worcester Warriors) on Saturday 28 July 2007. Every three years Worcester becomes home to the Three Choirs Festival, which dates from the 18th century and is credited with being the oldest music festival in Europe. The location of the festival rotates each year between the Cathedral Cities of the Three Counties, Gloucester, Hereford and Worcester. Famous for its championing of English music, especially that of Elgar, Vaughan Williams and Gustav Holst, Worcester last hosted the festival in August 2011. The Worcester Festival was established in 2003.
Held in August, the festival consists of a variety of music, theatre, cinema and workshops, as well as the already established Beer Festival, which runs as an event within the Worcester Festival. For one weekend the city plays host to the Worcester Music Festival. Now in its 4th year (2011) the festival comprises a weekend original music by predominantly local bands and musicians. All performances are free, and take place throughout the city centre in bars, clubs, community buildings, churches and the library. In 2010 the festival comprised 230 unique acts. Worcester Festival ends with a spectacular firework display on the banks of the River Severn on the Monday of the August bank holiday.
1. Worcester Cathedral
Worcester Cathedral, before the English Reformation known as Worcester Priory, is an Anglican cathedral in Worcester, England; situated on a bank overlooking the River Severn. It is the seat of the Bishop of Worcester. Its official name is The Cathedral Church of Christ and the Blessed Mary the Virgin of Worcester. Built between 1084 and 1504, Worcester Cathedral represents every style of English architecture from Norman to Perpendicular Gothic. It is famous for its Norman crypt and unique chapter house, its unusual Transitional Gothic bays, its fine woodwork and its "exquisite" central tower,[1] which is of particularly fine proportions. The cathedral's west facade appeared, with a portrait of Sir Edward Elgar, on the reverse of £20 note issued by the Bank of England between 1999 and 2007.
2. Hanburry Hall
Hanbury Hall is thought to stand on the site of the previous mansion, Spernall Hall, and Thomas Vernon first describes himself as ‘of Hanbury Hall’ in 1706, and this and other evidence leads to a likely completion date of about 1706. The date of 1701 above the front door is thought to be a Victorian embellishment, but no building accounts are known to exist. Hanbury Hall was built by the wealthy chancery lawyer Thomas Vernon in the early 18th century. Thomas Vernon was the great grandson of the first Vernon to come to Hanbury, Worcestershire, Rev Richard Vernon (1549–1628). Rev Richard and his descendants slowly accumulated land in Hanbury, including the manor, bought by Edward Vernon in 1630, but it was Thomas through his successful legal practice who added most to estates, which amounted to nearly 8,000 acres (32 km2) in his successor Bowater Vernon’s day.
3. Avoncroft Museum of Historic Buildings
Avoncroft Museum of Historic Buildings is an open-air museum of rescued buildings which have been relocated to its site in Stoke Heath, a district of Bromsgrove, Worcestershire, England. Founded in 1963 and opened in 1967, the museum was conceived following the dismantling of a 15th-century timber-framed house in Bromsgrove in 1962 to provide a location for its reconstruction. It became England's first open-air museum and the second in the United Kingdom. This building is known as the 'Merchant's House' today, though it has been known by other names in the past, including the 'Bromsgrove House' and the 'Tudor House'. It now houses a collection of domestic, industrial, agricultural and other forms of historic building, the majority dismantled and re-erected.
The museum's collection comprises more than 27 buildings and structures which have been relocated from their original sites under threat of demolition, being rebuilt and restored at the museum. This includes a fully functioning windmill and a post WW2 prefab house as used in many towns and cities after the Second World War to provide quick affordable replacements for houses destroyed by bombing. The Arcon V prefabricated house was originally constructed on Moat Lane in Yardley, Birmingham and was transported to the museum in 1981.
4. Porcelain Museum
The Worcester Porcelain Museum is a ceramics museum located in the Royal Worcester porcelain factory's former site in Worcester, England. The museum houses the world’s largest collection of Worcester porcelain. The collections date back to 1751 and the Victorian gallery, the ceramic collections, archives and records of factory production, form the primary resource for the study of Worcester porcelain and its history. The museum is the only part of Royal Worcester left at the Severn Street site in Worcester after the factory went into administration in 2008 and closed in 2009. The Royal Worcester Visitor Centre, the seconds shop and the cafe all closed with the factory in 2009.
5. Snowshill Manor
Snowshill Manor is a National Trust property located in the village of Snowshill, Gloucestershire, England.The garden at Snowshill was laid out by Wade, in collaboration with Arts and Crafts movement architect, M. H. Baillie Scott, between 1920 and 1923 as a series of outside rooms seen as an extension to the house. Features include terraces and ponds. The manor house is a typical Cotswold house, made from local stone; the main part of the house dates from the 16th century. Today, the main attraction of the house is perhaps the display of Wade's collection. From 1900 until 1951, when he gave the Manor to the National Trust, Wade amassed an enormous and eclectic collection of objects reflecting his interest in craftsmanship. The objects in the collection include 26 suits of Japanese samurai armour dating from the 17th and 19th centuries; bicycles; toys; musical instruments and more.
6. Harvington Hall
Harvington Hall is a moated medieval and Elizabethan manor house in the hamlet of Harvington in the civil parish of Chaddesley Corbett, south-east of Kidderminster in the English county of Worcestershire. Harvington Hall belongs to the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Birmingham and is particularly notable for its vestment-hide and seven priest-holes, four of which are built around the main staircase and are thought to be the work of Nicholas Owen.
7. CrownGate Shopping Centre
CrownGate Worcester is a shopping centre in Worcester, England. It contains 60 stores, with a range of both large and smaller units, including anchor tenants House of Fraser, Debenhams and Primark. There are also three restaurants, a large car park with Bus Station and The Huntingdon Hall Theater. The Centre has just undergone an extensive £4million refurbishment and rebranding with new floors, canopies and lights as well as modern street furniture and art.
8. Worcestershire Beacon
Worcestershire Beacon is a hill whose summit at 425 m (1,394 ft) is the highest point of the range of Malvern Hills that runs approximately 13 kilometres (8.1 mi) north-south along the Herefordshire-Worcestershire border, although Worcestershire Beacon itself lies entirely within Worcestershire. The Beacon is highly popular with walkers with its easily reached dense network of footpaths criss-crossing it and the area has been designated by the Countryside Agency as an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty.
9. Great Malvern Priory
Great Malvern Priory in Malvern, Worcestershire, England, was a Benedictine monastery c.1075-1540 and is now an Anglican parish church. In 1949 it was designated a Grade I listed building. It is a dominant building in the Great Malvern Conservation area.[citation needed] It has the largest display of 15th century stained glass in England, as well as carved miserichords from the 15th and 16th century and the largest collection of Medieval floor and wall tiles. In 1860 major restoration work was carried out by Sir George Gilbert Scott. It also the venue for concerts and civic services.
10. Brockhampton Estate
The Brockhampton Estate is a farmed estate in Herefordshire, England, which is owned by the National Trust. The Brockhampton Estate is located near the village of Brockhampton near the town of Bromyard. The main attraction of the Brockhampton Estate is Lower Brockhampton, a timber framed manor house that dates back to the late 14th century. The manor house is surrounded by a moat and is entered by a newly restored gatehouse at the front of the house. The house is surrounded by 1,000 acres (4.0 km2) of farmland and 700 acres (2.8 km2) of woodland. In 2010, the National Trust undertook a major restoration project to the house using traditional wattle and daub building methods. The Brockhampton Estate was bequeathed to the National Trust in 1946 by Colonel John Lutley. The site of the mediaeval village of Studmarsh is thought to be located in the estate. In 2012, an archaeological dig unearthed the foundations of two buildings that may have been part of the village.
11. Spetchley Park
Spetchley Park in the hamlet of Spetchley, near Worcester, England, has belonged to the Berkeley family, who also own Berkeley Castle in Gloucestershire, since it was first built in 1606. Today, in the garden at Spetchley very little has changed since Ellen Willmott’s day. It is a garden of contrasts: there are walled gardens, a melon yard with its original glasshouses, a horse pool, Victorian conservatory, a delightful Root House’, statues, fountains, architectural follies, rose gardens, lakes and bridges, superb herbaceous borders and magnificent specimen trees. A famous regular visitor to Spetchley was the composer Edward Elgar, who had gone to a Catholic school on the estate and in later years stayed at Spetchley many times, living in the Garden Cottage. The pine trees nearby are called "Elgar's Pines" and according to his inscription for his hosts in their copy of the score, they inspired him to write parts of The Dream of Gerontius.
12. Malvern Museum
The Malvern Museum in Great Malvern, the town centre of Malvern, Worcestershire, England, is located in the Abbey Gateway, the former gateway to the Great Malvern Priory. The museum was established in 1979 and is owned and managed by the Malvern Museum Society Ltd, a registered charity. The Priory Gatehouse was a gift to the museum in 1980 from the de Vere Group, the owners of the neighbouring Abbey Hotel, and is staffed by volunteers. As such, the building itself is the museum's major exhibit.
Among the museum's exhibits are many local artifacts and archeological findings dating from the Iron Age hill fort at the British Camp, to recent history. A series of rooms depicts different periods of history and include lifelike displays and information boards. Themes covered include natural history, Malvern Priory, Malvern Forest and Chase, life in Victorian Malvern, Edward Elgar, the Malvern Festival, the history of the local economy including the 19th century hydrotherapy using Malvern water (instrumental in the settlement's rapid growth from a village to a large town), the development of radar by TRE, and Morgan Motor Company cars.
The museum is open daily, 10.30 to 17.00, from 25 March to 31 October (closed Wednesdays except for school visits during term time).
13. Fort Royal Hill
Fort Royal Hill, is in a park in Worcester, England, and the site of the remains of an English Civil War fort.Fort Royal was a Civil War sconce (or redoubt) on a small hill to the south-east of Worcester overlooking the Sidbury Gate. It was built by the Royalists in 1651 to defend the hill, because during the siege in 1646 Parliamentary forces had positioned their artillery on the hill and had been able to severely damage the city's walls.
14. Little Malvern Priory
Little Malvern Priory, in the village of Little Malvern near Malvern, Worcestershire, was a Benedictine monastery c.1171-1537. It was founded from Worcester Cathedral. Little remains of the 12th century church, which was rebuilt in 1480-1482. The site is now occupied by house named Little Malvern Court, which has limited public opening. The present building comprises a medieval chancel and crossing tower, and a modern west porch on the site of the east bays of the nave. The transepts and the two chapels flanking the choir are in ruins. The grade I listed Little Malvern Priory church, dedicated to St Giles, is adjacent.
