Ted's echoes from the past

Pershore "born and bred" and now in his 80th year, Ted comes from a family which has been part of the fabric of the Avonside town for generations. One branch were saddlers and another butchers.

Ted traces has family roots back about a couple of centuries to Tenbury Wells, and it was a great-uncle Thomas Milward, who first set up the family butcher's shop in a three-gabled property at Broad Street, Pershore - the town's central square - in mid-Victorian times.

However, Thomas died in 1885 at the age of only 38 and was succeeded at the butcher's shop by his brother, Edmund Milward, Ted's grandfather. Edmund was succeeded, in due course, by his sons John and Charles (Ted's uncle and father).

The Broad Street shop eventually closed in 1948, after the sudden death of John Milward. It had probably traded in the town for the best part of a century and was described by a local historian just after the last war as being the oldest business in Pershore.

The premises were sold by Charles Milward in 1949, to Littleton and Badsey Growers, and the site is now occupied by Ganderton Court, a complex of apartments.

Ted's father Charles was a butcher by trade but primarily looked after another side of the family business - the parcels of grazing and garden land it owned in various parts of the town and surrounds. Charles also rented four parcels of land which now form a large slice of Abbey Park.

Ted was born at 10 Broad Street and spent his first 20 or more years in four properties around the central square - in the butcher's shop at No.18, in his parents' two successive homes at Nos.10 and 19, and in No.16, after marrying Jean Workman, the girl whose family lived there. She was literally "the girl next door" ... to the Milward butcher's shop!

Clearly, therefore, most of Ted's enduring boyhood and youthful memories are of scenes of life in Broad Street.

He particularly remembers the childhood delights of the annual Pershore Fair in the central square. It was held, under an ancient charter, every June 26.

"Everything began at 8pm the previous evening when crowds of townspeople would roll up for what was known as the "Rush In". Fairground folk with their traction engines would line-up at each end of Broad Street and would be on their starting blocks, waiting for a police inspector, standing in the centre of the square, to wave his stick.

"This was the signal for them to rush into Broad Street and claim their pitches for such attractions as carousels, swings, helter-skelters, coconut shies and the like. Together with a few market stalls, the square was quickly packed, leaving an overflow of fairground folk to set up their pitches in Weir Meadow down by the bridges.

"For the two nights the funfair attractions operated, Broad Street and Weir Meadow, together with the length of Bridge Street between the two, were thronged with people and excited children," recalls Ted, who adds that Stricklands of Worcester were usually prominent among the fairground folk.

Sadly, the outbreak of the Second World War sounded the death knell of Pershore Fair even though it had been a highlight of the local scene for so long.

"A tiny band of stall-holders including Pratleys of The Shambles, Worcester, tried valiantly to keep it going during the war years but afterwards it never really took off again. The town had to make do with a funfair in a much reduced form on Weir Meadow."

Another of Ted's memories from the late 1920s and early30s is of the seasonal queues of horse-drawn vehicles which lined Broad Street as fruit growers brought their produce to the Pershore Co-operative Fruit Market in Defford Road.

"There was regularly a daily queue of drays and carts all along Broad Street and also down Bridge Street, sometimes as far as the mill and Manor House.

"Father grew quite a lot of plums, apples and pears and took these to the market by horse and dray. He would put a load of produce on board ready for the morning and, when I was still at junior school, we had to be up very early in order to be in the queue of vehicles by 6.30am.

"Father always tried desperately to off-load at the market in time to get back for a second load before it was time for me to go to school."

Ted says the queues amounted to "quite a gathering of the clans" with fruit growers converging from in and around Pershore and from outlying villages.

"One of the very few cars sometimes seen in the queues was the open tourer belonging to Francis Brett Young, the poet and author who lived at Craycombe House, near Fladbury.

"The produce was obviously delivered to the market to be sold, and a lot of it was packaged and taken to the Pershore and Defford stations to be transported by rail to other parts of the country.

"However, there were occasional gluts of produce, especially of plums and runner beans, and the surplus amounts would be stacked in the grounds of the Junior School or across the road under the trees in that part of Abbey Park which my father was renting at the time. These gluts of produce were often sold at give away prices at a loss to the growers, such as 6d per 72 lb. pot hamper."

Seasonal influxes of pickers of hops and other crops were also memorable features of Pershore life for Ted.

"Mr Meikle of Wick would send horses and drays to the railway station to collect hop-pickers arriving by train from Dudley and other parts of the Black Country.

"We watched dray-loads of them going through to the town on their way to the accommodation provided for them by Mr Meikle and known as the "Barracks".The hop-pickers certainly livened up the town a bit each late summer. There was fun and games when they had too much to drink in the pubs and got involved in punch-ups."

Also from the late 1920s and early 30s, Ted has strong memories of the annual Armistice parades when the military would form up in columns of four along a considerable length of Broad Street, where the inspecting officer was General Sir Francis Davies, who lived at The Park House, Elmley Castle.

In an Evening News feature article a few months ago, my colleague Mike Pryce said that for him Pershore's central square always had "the flavour of a Wild West town."

It was a picture that struck an immediate cord with Ted, especially in his recollections of Broad Street in the late 1940s.

"Gypsies and other itinerant workers came to the area at harvest times for crop picking and would descend on the town on Saturday mornings with their horses and carts. The horses were tethered both sides of Broad Street while the men strolled off to the pubs, such as would serve them, and the women went shopping, afterwards joining the men for a drink.

"The children were left to hang around the carts and outside the pubs, and I often wondered to myself 'what chance have they got'. At closing time - a civilised 2pm in those days - all the gypsies drifted back to Broad Street and, in their new-found high spirits, often engaged in trotting races from Broad Street down to the bridges and back. Hectic affairs they were too ... pity the horses!

"I believe the police eventually had to step in and put a stop to it all. Even in those days, traffic was disrupted. I understand too that local landlords regularly had to call in the police to sort out punch-ups. It was certainly a bit like a Wild West town on those days!"

Ted says that when his parents were living at 19 Broad Street, next to Lloyds Bank, he was often to be found in the butcher's shop of his bachelor uncle John.

"It had a slaughterhouse and livestock pens and stables at the back, and in those days there were at least five butchers' shops with slaughterhouses in Pershore - a lot for a town of only about 3,000 people then."

Ted recalls helping his uncle's housekeeper to rear a runt from a litter of pigs to pork size, earning himself enough pocket money at only four years of age to buy his first pony from gypsies.

"I was told the pig had been sold, but I'm sure it went via the slaughterhouse into the shop!"

Ted has poignant memories of the sub-standard housing conditions and spartan life-styles of families who lived in Ganderton's Row - a narrow and crowded thoroughfare which ran off Broad Street.

"The houses backed on to my uncle's shop, slaughterhouse and livestock pens on the west side. I knew most of the families well and, quite a few, like myself, have been fortunate to survive to this day."

"On light summer evenings in the late 1920s and early 1930s, coach-loads of visitors on countryside trips stopped off in Broad Street, to go for drinks in Pershore pubs. When they returned, the Ganderton's Row children gathered round the coaches and called out 'Chuck us a penny'. The visitors usually obliged, and there were scrambles on the ground as the children tussled to pick off the coins."

Poor families generally in Pershore also had cause to be grateful to a Miss Lawson, a local benefactor who gave generous help to those in need during the Depression days.

Ted says the Old Bakehouse which stood on the north side of Broad Street for many years was a popular gathering place for local lads and lasses. On cold winter days and evenings, they would lean against its wall for "a warm".

The bakehouse was run for a long time by the Protheroe family but was later taken over by Burtons and then Fine Fare.

There was also the shop of Mr Marshall at 24 Broad Street. He put antiques out on the cobbled verge in front of his shop and, for some reason, also had the job of pollarding the trees in the square, some of which still survive today.

"I believe Mr Marshall was the first person to set up a canning plant in Pershore, albeit a small affair at the rear of his shop. Local women went out into the countryside to pick blackberries for him. I often saw them returning with large baskets, crammed full of blackberries. Goodness knows how long it took them to pick all those fruits and, for all their efforts, they got only a penny or two a pound."

Racedays at Pershore also feature strongly in Ted's memories. For years, the town had a racecourse near the cemetery in Defford Road, and the Royal Three Tuns in Broad Street and other Pershore hotels paid host to the owners, trainers and jockeys and also offered stabling for the racehorses which travelled to and fro by rail. The Royal Three Tuns, with its large ballroom, also hosted hunt balls and other glittering functions.

Ted also remembers the days when there was a monastery near the Abbey. "It was where the bowling pavilion now stands, and I often saw the monks walking out in pairs for exercise along the avenue of trees at Abbey Park."

Ted understands that his grandfather and namesake Edmund Milward, who died before he was born, was quite a character.

"He regularly went off in his pony and trap to the markets at Upton-upon-Severn and Tewkesbury and would only come back when his pony brought him after closing time! He died suddenly after carrying a quarter of beef from his slaughterhouse to his shop."

Ted's father Charles was sent as a boarder to Hanley Castle Grammar School and was taken there by pony and trap at the start of each term, being picked up at the end by the same means.

He became a sergeant in the Worcestershire Yeomanry but transferred to the Worcestershire Regiment during the First World War, seeing active service in France and finishing with the rank of company quarter-master sergeant.

It was from the Nashdom Trust that Charles Milward rented parcels of land now forming the major part of Abbey Park. Though the primary use was for grazing, Pershore Flower Show was held there pre-war as was Pershore Horse Fair. The former Pershore United football team also played there, and it was the venue for Pershore Hospital Cup finals.

Charles Milward died suddenly in 1955, at the age of 61, trying to catch his cob to collect a load of pig meal from Pershore Mill. His brother John, the butcher had also died suddenly in 1948.

Says Ted: "You can see therefore that my grandfather, uncle and father all died with their boots on, so to speak."

Not long after Charles Milward's death, Ted was approached by another old Pershore character, Tom Spiers, who had also been in France with the Worcesters .

"He recalled with gratitude how, whenever my father had been on duty, the troops could depend on a hot meal. Clearly, there must have been a lot of mutual respect in the horrendous conditions they endured."

Ted went to Prince Henry's Grammar School, Evesham, and after a short spell in a solicitor's office, joined the staff of the Sanitary Surveyor's Department of Pershore Rural District Council in January 1938.

Ted was working on air-raid precaution jobs the day war declared, Sunday, September 3, 1939, but rode his bike to Pershore Station in the afternoon to assist in the reception of a train-load of London evacuee children. They were first escorted to the Senior School and then dispatched by the car-load to accommodation in the town and villages.

"Even as a callow youth of barely 18, I felt deep sorrow for their plight."

Early in 1940, Ted began thinking of joining-up, but his father, despite distinguished Army service himself, warned him that if he enlisted in the infantry, he would not be allowed across the doorstep again.

Despite this, in January 1940, he went to the recruiting office at Silver Street, Worcester, with the intention of joining an under-19 battalion but was rejected on the grounds of defective vision and told to get spectacles. Having done so, he applied for RAF aircrew, but was turned down again and opted instead for a "ground" trade, being accepted as a radio (later, radar) operator.

Back at the Pershore Rural District Council offices, his plan to enlist before being called up caused a bit of an upset.

"I was summoned into the office of the Council Clerk Frank Nicholas and appeared before the chairman, Col William Taylor, the clerk, and the surveyor Jack Holmes. They urged me to stay on until I was actually called up and offered me a salary increase from 17/6d a week to 27/6d. However, my mind was made up and I went straight into the RAF."

He was to spend six years serving at home and overseas during the war. On de-mob, he rejoined Pershore RDC in the surveyor's department eventually dealing in the main with planning applications.

In 1948, he married "the girl next door," Jean Workman, and they lived for 12 months with her mother at 16 Broad Street, before setting up home on their own in St Andrew's Road, Pershore, where they still live today.

On local government reorganisation in 1974, Ted joined Wychavon District Council in its department of planning and architecture at Norbury House, Droitwich, retiring in 1983. Ted and Jean have a daughter, but sadly their son died last year.

Ted has been a stalwart of Pershore Cricket Club since scoring for the first team way back in 1934. He played for the second X1 for years and once turned out for Worcestershire in a benefit match against Pershore when Reg Perks failed to turn up. "I had been 12th man for Pershore, and a large crowd was not enthralled by the substitution," quipped Ted.