AS national heroes go they don’t come much bigger in England than Horatio Nelson. So when rumours began that Admiral Lord Nelson, victor on The Nile and at Copenhagen – he hadn’t even fought Trafalgar then – was on his way to Worcester on a Sunday afternoon in August, 1802, something not far short of Beatlemania broke out, although minus the screaming teenage girls and lines of police with their arms linked.

Folk rushed from all parts, many thousands of them, to line the streets, cramming into every window and vantage point to catch sight of the great man and his beautiful companion.

Whoever was on weekend duty for Berrow’s Worcester Journal turned out too and filed a suitably sabre rattling piece, which began: “The intention of the illustrious Hero to visit the city, being known a few hours previous to his arrival, a great concourse of people assembled to hail his approach with heartfelt acclamation and, taking the horses from his carriage, drew it to the Hop Pole Inn amidst the grateful plaudits of the admiring spectators who lined the streets and filled the windows of the houses.

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“The brave avenger of his country’s wrongs was also greeted by the joyous peels of the city’s church bells, several discharges of cannon, and by various outbursts of esteem and respect until Night had completely drawn her sable mantle over the scene.

Worcester News:

“The gallant Admiral was in good health and spirits and wore upon his breast the insignia of various Orders with which he has been honoured for his glorious achievements. He gratified the exulting crowd by appearing at the window of the Hop Pole Inn and bowing to them with most gracious condescension.”

Nelson had travelled to Worcester from Downton Castle, near Ludlow in the company of his mistress the beautiful Emma, Lady Hamilton and her rather older husband Sir William, who shuffled along behind.

Mind you the national icon didn’t look a lot better. Speaking a few years later, James Plant, who had been a china painter in Chamberlain’s factory in Diglis which the party visited, recalled of Nelson: “ A battered looking gentleman made his appearance. He had lost an arm and an eye. Leaning his left and only arm was Lady Hamilton, evidently pleased at the interest excited by her companion. And then among the general company came a very infirm old gentleman. This was Sir William Hamilton.”

Worcester News:

The party had visited Chamberlain’s, rather than the more famous porcelain factory in Worcester, because it was owned by a friend of mine host at The Hop Pole Inn where they stayed overnight.The Hop Pole was Worcester’s premier hostelry in the early 1800s.Younger members of the Royal Family often used it and Princess Victoria was to stay there in 1830.

It stood on the corner of Shaw Street and Foregate Street, but the building has long gone as a hotel. In recent decades has been occupied by estate agents.

The property closed as an inn in the 1840s and after considerable alteration was renamed Victoria House, becoming the most high class shop in the city. In the middle decades of the 20th century it housed Fearis’s the grocers.

In the mid-1980s there was much local concern when it was discovered the hotel’s Assembly Room, where Nelson was entertained and stood in a separate building at the rear, was in desperate condition. Listed by Whitehall, it had to be saved.

Worcester News:

Opposite, and slightly confusingly, stood another hotel, The Hopmarket Hotel, on the other corner of the Foregate Street/Shaw Street junction. This was part of the city’s historic Hopmarket, based around a central yard, which underwent a £1.25 million transformation in the early Eighties.

The project was marketed as the UK’s “first conversion of a hotel into flats”, although that seems a rather ambitious claim to me. But there would have been a smart apartment for Horatio and Emma.