THE title “King Charles” rings a few bells around here and seeing as the nation now has another one, the third in fact, maybe it’s a good time to invite him to the Faithful City. After all Worcester does have an address named after him.

King Charles House stands in New Street and is a restaurant, although it wasn’t in 1651 when the later to be Charles II briefly tarried there after realising he was on the losing side in the Battle of Worcester.

Choosing discretion over valour, he high-tailed it north to Boscobel in Staffordshire and somehow ended up in France, which is in completely the other direction.

At the time the property was owned by Edward Durant, a grandson of Richard Durant, a wealthy brewer who had built it as his two storey home in 1577. When Charles II (then still Prince Charles) arrived in Worcester with his mostly Scottish army, Edward offered to put him up and the use of his house as the Royalist HQ.

A decision young Durant probably regretted, because the day ended badly with him having his front door kicked in by furious Roundheads as Charles galloped hell for leather up Ombersley Road en route to Stourbridge.

However the choice of the New Street  premises had been fortuitous for the future king because it offered the only possible exit out of the city. Tradition has it that Parliamentary troopers arrived at the front door as Charles left by the small back entrance through the city walls and mounted his waiting horse.

Accompanied by Lord Wilmot he rode across fields and along a path now called Sansome Walk to Barbourne, where the couple, feeling they had outfoxed their pursuers, paused to catch breath and take a recce.

They then decided to join the Ombersley Road and head for a crossing point of the Severn somewhere near Holt Fleet. Thus began one of the greatest escapes in British history.

Back in New Street, it was probably Edward Durant who modified the original house, dividing and extending the northern part to form a separate dwelling. In more recent times this has become a restaurant. To compensate for the lost space, Edward built another storey onto the existing building.

By the 1660s the property had been bought by William Woodward and although there is a belief the Berkeleys of Spetchley, one of the county’s leading Roman Catholic families, were also once owners several historians consider this unlikely, pointing out the Berkeleys certified town house was in Mealcheapen Street, just round the corner and they wouldn’t need two within a stone’s throw.