The night we played

Butt End Annie up

COLOURFUL times half-a-century ago amid the former closely-knit riverside community of houses, shops, pubs, lodging houses, scrapyards and warehouses of Worcester's Quay Street area are fondly remembered by Robert Wardell.

His stepfather, Bill Redman, a flamboyant character who drove around in a large and flashy American car, kept a lodging house in Quay Street through the 1950s. It was the nightly haven of tramps and also of men and women who went out "tatting" in the day - buying and selling goods from prams and barrows.

'Butt End Annie' was just one of the familiar figures of the city street scene who frequented Redman's Lodging House. It occupied what had been for very many years the historic watermen's inn, the Old Severn Trow at No.16, on the west side of Quay Street.

I discovered more about the fun and games in Quay Street in times past when I recently visited Bob Wardell at his home in Drake Avenue, Dines Green, Worcester.

He was a war baby of 1944 and the son of an American serviceman. His mother, Mary Chandler, later married Bill Redman and went to live at his house and shop in Quay Street - the property next door to his lodging house.

Bob was mainly brought up by his grandmother, Mrs Lillian Chandler, at Blakefield Road, St John's. But he was a frequent visitor to the Redmans at Quay Street, playing with his stepbrother William 'Billy' Redman and had "some great times and a lot of laughs" there.

He explains that tramps were the main 'guests' of his stepfather's lodging house.

"If they paid 1/6d or two shillings a night, they got a bed on one of the upper floors. But, for a shilling a night, they only had tables to lean on and chairs and benches on the ground floor. There was also a coal boiler on which they could heat their cans for hot water.

"In those days, whenever the police wanted to find somebody guilty of a petty crime or disorderly behaviour, they'd know where to find them - among the 'guests' at Redman's lodging house. Even so, the tramps in general seemed to me to be very friendly folk," recalls Bob Wardell.

"In the mornings, some of the tramps and other 'guests' would go out to the bottom of the yard and collect prams and barrows to go tatting in the city streets and suburbs, buying old clothes and all sorts of cast-off goods which they usually brought back to the three scrapyards in the Quay Street area - Prossers, Johnny Wilson's, and Bands.

"I vividly remember that Mr Prosser had a big open container of old clothes in his yard, and he kept a bull mastiff as a guard dog to stop people stealing from it. If anybody tried to snatch anything from the container, the dog would jump out from under the clothes and give them more than a fright."

Bob and stepbrother Billy liked to play inside the hop and seed warehouses at South Quay, jumping about among the sacks until they were spotted by the warehouse workmen and given "clips around the earhole". From time to time, the two lads would also "play up" Butt End Annie.

"We'd chase after her and knock off her hat, sometimes putting it up a lamp-post, and she'd moan like hell. There was also the occasion one dark night when we spotted her in a compromising situation with a gentleman friend in a parked van off Quay Street. We let off a firework banger under it and the chap came flying out in fright, hitching up his trousers!"

Bob Wardell also remembers the day when about 10 police officers suddenly arrived in Quay Street to arrest another well-known Worcester character of the past, 'Naughty Norah'.

"They shouted to her 'Are you going to come out peacefully Norah?' Apparently, she'd been involved in previous violent tussles with the police. Yet, to me, she seemed a lovely person.

"Another colourful Quay Street personality was the mother of newspaper seller Johnny O'Shea. She always walked about smoking a small white clay pipe."

Bob says a popular local pub at the time was the Old Farriers Arms, which stood in the shadow of All Saints Church at Quay Street. Barney's Caf, on the opposite side Broad Street from the church - now a fish and chip restaurant - was another favourite haunt of locals, as was, for the youngsters, a sweet shop at the top of Quay Street.

As boys, Bob Wardell and Billy Redman were always fascinated by Albion House, the toyshop in Broad Street, and particularly by the electric train set running round in the window.

"We enjoyed pressing the switch to put it in motion."

The stepbrothers would also play occasionally in a lorry parked at the nearby Dent Glove Factory, on the riverside at Warmstry, and Bob would sometimes buy fireworks made by Bert Perry who ran a bicycle repair shop in St John's. Bob recalls with some guilt his mischievous pranks with those fireworks.

Bill Redman, his stepfather, did a bit of "tatting" at one stage, but then set up as a general dealer from his shop next to his Quay Street lodging house. He sold fruit and dealt in scrap and also did some dealing in the sale room inside the former Beauchamp Arms pub, in Broad Street, and also in the sale rooms in an alley off Broad Street, alongside the former Army and Navy Recruiting Centre.

Bill Redman had two old vans which he parked on open ground adjacent to the nearby Hounds Lane School. But his pride and joy was his big "Yankee" car - a Ford Hudson limo apparently known as a Tearaplane.

"It was always serviced for him by a chap named Fred Brewer, though there was one occasion during a high Severn flood when some stupid joker let the handbrakes off in several cars, including the Ford Hudson. The vehicles ended up in the river proper and had to be pulled out later, though my stepfather's car was soon sorted out and made roadworthy again."

Bob Wardell very much followed in his stepfather's footsteps as a general dealer. He began selling fruit and veg from a van. But later, after his marriage to Suckley girl Rose Farney, he took the lease of a shop in Rose Avenue, Tolladine, near their home in Portefields Road. The sign outside read Wardell's Fruit and Veg.

Stepbrother Billy Redman is a bricklayer and lives at Lower Broadheath, and stepsister Joyce (Mrs Elworthy) lives on Worcester's Westside.