Battle of the barrels: How Worcester's vinegar works beat the Germans

In case that score line seems a bit obscure, it relates to the capacity of a storage vat.

Until 1902, the Great Heidelberg Tun in the cellars of Heidelberg Castle in south west Germany had reigned supreme. Built in 1751, it comprised the timber from 130 oak trees and was the fourth huge storage barrel to be constructed there, each one bigger than the last.

The Germans’ Heidelberg Tun, outscored by Hill Evans giant vat

Visitors would gather to gaze in awe at this wonder of Germanic craftsmanship. But then along came Edward Bickerton Evans and Thomas Rowley Hill.

The pair were the sons of Worcester businessmen Edward Evans and William Hill, who in 1830 had set up a vinegar works in Lowesmoor, which under their guidance and subsequently that of their offspring, grew into the largest of its kind in the world.

For while the Germans at Heidelberg were constrained  by their location – after all there can be only so many vats you can cram into the cellar of a castle, no matter now spacious – Hill and Evans, both senior and junior, could spread their wings.

The Vinegar Express crosses Shrub Hill Road

To expand their business they actually purchased several surrounding streets from the city council and by the turn of the century their factory site covered seven acres, stretching from Shrub Hill Road west to Silver Street, the boundary of today’s City Walls Road. It even had its own railway, nicknamed the Vinegar Express, to carry products straight to the main line at Shrub Hill.

Everything about the Hill Evans works, which eventually closed in 1966 with all the contents destroyed, was big.

A Worcester City guide of 1902 stated: “The filling hall is one of the wonders of Worcester and has as great a span as the roof of Westminster Hall.

The enormous tuns therein stored, dwarf to ridiculously small proportions the hitherto famous Tun of Heidelberg.

“The hall is certainly monumental: its dimensions are 120ft by 160ft and its glass roof rises to a central height of 70ft. The company’s own railway runs into the hall and the casks are loaded directly on to railway trucks.” Six grades of vinegar were made and a large quantity of British wine.

The factory’s cellars in the 1970s before conversion into the Mighty U home improvement store. The white mark is not a ghost, but damage to the print

The factory was a complex unit of all the brewery crafts and processes.

It had its own mill and cooperage, where all the vats and barrels were made, a distillery and all the processes associated with vinegar and wine making were carried out there.

Its array of vats was the finest in the world and its flag ship the Great Vat was 32 ft high and 32 ft in diameter with a 120,000 gallon capacity, three times that of the Heidelberg Tun.

But the best is yet to come. During the Second World War the Americans decided to build a bigger vat than the one in Worcester.

The works entrance with the Vinegar Express railway line clearly evident. The Hill Evans factory site is now the St Martin’s Quarter development

The Hill Evans coopers, proud men, were incensed to lose their record and begged management to allow them to increase the size of the Great Vat, but were refused.

So undaunted and under the pretence of carrying repairs, they surreptitiously enlarged the size of their pride and joy. The company remained in the dark until the Excise men came calling and then the coopers had to own up. But it was still 2-0 to Worcester.