THERE have been numerous transportation surveys produced for Worcester over the years as the supposed best planning brains in the business have struggled to get to grips with the city’s traffic problems.

One that always sticks in the mind was a humdinger of an idea to build a flyover across Pitchcroft. It came out in the early Sixties and would have taken vehicles down Castle Street and basically straight on. A viaduct would have gone over the racecourse and over the river and deposited everything somewhere in St John’s, where presumably another new highway would have taken it left towards Malvern, straight on towards Hereford or right towards Kidderminster.

Needless to say this never happened and not only for the fact the runners in the 2.30 hunter chase would have had to weave around some imposing concrete pillars. But it does make you question the thinking of the mind that produced the plan in the first place.

However, I have now found one which runs that pretty close in the highly unlikely category. Again it came from the 1960s, a decade when the distinctive aroma of the Moroccan Woodbine appears to have been wafting well beyond Woodstock USA and into the offices of Surveyors UK.

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Appropriately it surfaced in 1967, the Summer of Love, when some genius tasked with sorting out traffic congestion at the cathedral end of High Street peered through the haze and said something like: “Hey man, I’ve got a far out plan. How about building an underpass outside the church, then you won’t have to bother about an unsightly traffic island.”

And that’s exactly what was proposed. A drawing was produced to illustrate what was meant and this is reproduced here.

For anyone slightly confused about the direction of travel, it shows the approach up Sidbury. The road leading off right in the foreground is Friar Street, the spire in the background is St Andrew’s in Deansway and the buildings which appear to be sitting on top of the underpass are actually at the bottom of High Street. The cathedral is hidden away to the left.

But before you dismiss this as obviously a case for the men in white coats, just remember this was the era of wholesale change in that part of the city.

The Lychgate Scheme, which had involved demolition of many old buildings in the area, was just about coming to an end and so possibly someone thought: “Heavens, (or a word similar) let’s go for broke. Enough has been done already, why not bang in an underpass while we are at it.”

But this was another bright idea that never happened either. Mainly because of the colossal cost, but also because the vibration of traffic along Sidbury and Deansway was already causing concern to the cathedral authorities, so having huge great earthworks taking place within a cassock’s toss of the ancient building would have been beyond the power of prayer.

Never mind, here are a few photos of the changing face of the cathedral traffic island over the decades. And one showing what might have been.