Friar Street memories: Worcester's carbuncle car park

To borrow a Royal phrase – ie the words of Prince Charles – the multi-storey car park in  Friar Street is like a carbuncle on the face of the city’s most authentic medieval thoroughfare.

Because it was slipped in during the wholescale redevelopment of the adjoining area in the 1960s, possibly the brains at the time thought no one would notice. And in a sense they were right, because as far as I can recall, there has never been a concerted campaign to do much about it. So its ugly concrete protrusions continue to stick out like a nasty boil on the nose of your favourite granny. 

Which is very sad, because Friar Street as a whole has retained more of its timber-framed buildings than any other in Worcester. Despite the architectural carnage of the early Sixties, the street did manage to hang on to most of its gems and it’s in this part of the original city, between High Street and  City Walls Road, that a visitor can best get the feel of what medieval Worcester must have looked like.

What was there before. The Old Deanery in Friar Street was pulled down to make way for a multi-storey car park

They would get an even better feel if that car park exit wasn’t there, because to make way for it a lovely old timbered building called the Old Deanery, which stood on the corner with Lich Street, was demolished.

Not sure what can be done about it now, but polite suggestions on a postcard please.

Still, while that affront to the senses was going on at one end of Friar Street, there was an altogether more pleasing outcome at the other, near the junction with New Street. For here  Divine Intervention – or more accurately the efforts of a gentleman called Mr J Matley Moore and his sister Elsie – stepped in to save a property generally considered the finest half-timbered building in Worcester.

The courtyard of Greyfriars before restoration

For around 200 years it has been known as Greyfriars and is believed to be one of a group erected by  Franciscan monks, possibly serving as their guesthouse. TheFranciscans, or Grey Friars, were an order of frugal preachers founded by St Francis of Assisi, which came to Britain around 1224. The friary they erected extended from Friar Street out to the city walls.

Although the Franciscans did much good work, their moral compass strayed somewhat and they began accepting gifts, notably houses and lands, which led to a popular doggerel: “No Baron or Squire or Knight of the Shire, lives half so well as a Holy Friar!”

Greyfriars at the start of the 1900s, when it was falling on hard times

These departures from their founder’s ideals led to their downfall and Henry VIII seized their properties at the Dissolution in 1538. Greyfriars was bought from the Crown by the Municipal Corporation of Worcester and then passed through several private hands, some of whom did not treat it very kindly. Indeed by the late 1800s it was one of the worst slum properties in Worcester.

The roof was in a terrible state, letting water in to the rooms below, some of which were packed with fruit debris, the legacy of being used as a greengrocers. Part of the timber framing actually fell into the roadway. 

To be fair, there is another version of Greyfriars’ story, which has it built in 1485 for local brewer Thomas Grene, who became High Bailiff of Worcester soon after. So take your pick.

Whatever, following decades in the doldrums, the building was eventually bought by a gentleman named WJ Thompson after the Second World War and then restored by dental surgeon Matley Moore, who for a while ran his practice from its north wing.

Now it is Grade I Listed and a National Trust property. Meanwhile that pustule of a car park continues to blot the cityscape just down the street.