Why Worcester, England, is so much more than sauce

Worcester drips with more than 2,000 years of history written in blood. It was built by conquering battle-scarred Roman legions 2,000 years ago; the 17th-century English Civil War drenched its streets with blood and one of its first freemen was naval war hero Lord Horatio Nelson.

Yet, the airy streets of this conservative and mercifully graffiti-free city couldn’t be more peaceful in the 21st century.

The fragments of the past remain. Just the other day, archaeologists uncovered a pristine 2,000-year-old Roman road near the city. Imagine, in this era of potholes. The archaeologists are keeping its location secret for fear of souvenir hunters.

All roads have led to Worcester — the county town and administrative capital of Worcestershire — pretty much since Roman times.

According to tourism body Visit Worcestershire, 17.3 million people visited the county in 2022, bringing £939 mn (R21 bn) with them.

I can’t understand why more people — especially anyone with an interest in history — do not make the journey to a city set in lush English countryside. It is just south of Birmingham and a two-hour direct train journey from London.

Watching mighty swans, their wings beating like drums, take-off from the River Severn, on a blue-sky summer evening, is heavenly.

Then again, I am biased. I kicked my first ball, drank my first pint and had my first kiss in Worcestershire, where my family has lived more for than 500 years. When I left Africa, after nearly 30 years of work, there was nowhere else that felt like home.

With a population of just over 100,000 — less than a quarter of Bloemfontein's — it is friendly and as safe as houses to walk in by day or night.

Worcester has much to commend it for tourists. It is big enough to keep you busy, yet small enough to get around quickly on foot. It is a university town, so there are plenty of decent restaurants, cafes and more than a few nightspots.

They used to say there was a pub in Worcester for every day of the year — not so many now but there are plenty, from bierkellers to cocktail bars. They include the hostelry where King Charles II escaped through the back door, during the Battle of Worcester in 1651, as Oliver Cromwell’s dragoons kicked down the front door. A stone outside the present-day King Charles House in New Street commemorates this narrow escape.

This rich history attracts many. The Battle of Worcester lasted for eight hours and left more than 3,000 dead — the bodies of men and horses blocked the streets. It changed English history forever, securing a brief republic and ushering in more religious freedom.

More than 13,000 soldiers for King Charles II fortified Worcester against 30,000 of Cromwell’s troops — the population of the city, at the time, was a mere 7,000.

Some relics of that battle survive. The Commandery, from whence the Royalists directed the battle, is now a very well put together museum.

Fort Royal, once a redoubt bristling with cannons high above the city, has been, preserved as a park. On the day of the battle, Cromwell’s troops massacred more than a 1,000 troops defending Fort Royal in less than an hour, before turning the guns on the city. The view from Fort Royal over the rooftops to Worcester Cathedral is stunning and little-changed. It is easy to see how much havoc the cannonade would have caused.

US founders John Adams and Thomas Jefferson travelled to Fort Royal in the 18th century and said Englishmen should make a pilgrimage there every year to recall the struggle for freedom.  

There wasn’t much freedom for the losers. The victors herded more than 8,000 mainly Scottish prisoners, taken at the Battle of Worcester, into the cathedral, awaiting their shipping to the Caribbean and US as indentured slaves.

The magnificent Worcester Cathedral is a huge draw for the tourists and a monument to hard work and perspiration. It has been a place of prayer for 14 centuries and it took more than 400 years to build from stone floated down the River Severn, from nearby quarries, and hauled into place by rope and human hand.

Scores of generations of craftsmen thrived in Worcester, passing on their skills down from father to son, in centuries of construction.

In the nave of the Cathedral is the tomb of King John, in real life the signatory of the Magna Carta — England’s early version of South Africa’s constitution — and in literature the hammer of outlaw Robin Hood. On his deathbed, he instructed courtiers to haul his remains from Nottingham to Worcester.

King John used to spend Christmas at Worcester and hunted in the forests that used to hem in the walled city. The forests may be further away these days, but the dawn chorus is beautiful and every now and again young fawns, foxes and squirrels stray into the heart of the city.

The massive stained-glass windows in the cathedral are breathtaking. On certain days, you can climb the 62m tower for a view across the county to savour. My favourite is the view over the lush Chapter Meadows, on the opposite bank of the River Severn, to the humpbacked Malvern Hills, a view unchanged for centuries.

To the right is the magnificent Georgian bridge over the Severn, lit up like a Christmas tree at night. It looks more like the South of France than the middle of England.

Not far away, just over the road from a memorial to the Worcestershire men who fought the South African war, an elegant bronze statue of composer Edward Elgar watches over the cathedral where played his music on the way to world fame.

Naval Hero Lord Nelson was already famous when he was made a freeman of Worcester in August 1802, in a pause between wars with the French. A huge crowd met him and led his horses away before drawing the carriage through the streets to the Hop Pole Inn, which is no longer there but the frontage still exists.

Lord Nelson arrived with his mistress Lady Hamilton and her husband — a bit weird, I know — and the three made appearances on the balcony during the evening to the cheers of a massive crowd. The city changed the name of Cooken Street to Copenhagen Street to commemorate one of Lord Nelson’s victories.

The great man ordered some of the famous Worcester porcelain for his breakfast table, but sadly perished at the Battle of Trafalgar before he could collect it. The set remains on show at the Museum of Royal Worcester.

Hard work made this city and the Worcester City Art Gallery & Museum tells the story. It was a centre for iron making, engineering, the wool trade and was once the capital of glove making, employing 30,000 people at its peak. The late Queen Elizabeth II wore Worcester-made gloves at her coronation.

Most of these industries have disappeared, but the world-famous Lea and Perrins Worcestershire Sauce is still made here, a 20-minute walk from where I am writing these words. The offices are now in Manchester and the ownership is with Warren Buffett and a bunch of other investors in the US.

A brown spicy sauce with a timeless taste created in Worcester that is exported across Africa. Like the city itself, once tasted never forgotten.

ON AFRICAN TIME

TickTok, a clock and watch repair shop, sits among the black-and-white buildings of Friar Street, the oldest street in Worcester, dating back to the 13th century.

The shop is packed to the rafters with grandfather clocks, 100-year-old timepieces and scores of watches that people bought in duty free, decades ago, and are now worth a pretty penny.

Every day, at least four new South African faces, many fresh from OR Tambo airport, find their way to TickTok.

On the other side of the counter they will be met with a warm smile and handshake, straight from Eshowe in KwaZulu-Natal, from owner Peter Schonert.

Aside from his talent for fixing clocks, Schonert is a master host, networker and proud South African. When you shake his hand you feel the distance from Africa melt away.

Schonert, born in Durban in 1960, took the leap from KwaZulu-Natal to Worcester in July 2019. It was in the cause of family that he came. His son Nick had signed with the Premiership Rugby side the Worcester Warriors. He signed with the Sale Sharks after the Warriors disbanded in 2023.

Schonert's other son Kurt played for London Scottish before embarking on a career as an entrepreneur, which includes a Worcester-based coffee shop and bakery called the Guilt Trip.

Their sister, Gabi, an art teacher who attended St Mary’s School Kloof in Durban, also joined the family in England.

It wasn’t plain sailing for Schonert senior when he arrived in Worcestershire. Back in KwaZulu-Natal, he'd spent 20 years running 13 cash and carry shops called Buzi. He also manufactured veldskoene with his company Bushwackers.

Finding work around Worcester wasn’t easy, as he was overqualified. He applied to be a maintenance man at St Peter’s Garden Centre in Worcester, to no avail. He worked for a short time as a forklift driver in a door factory in Upton-upon-Severn.

“I started the shop because my kids and wife were telling me I was driving them mad,” he says with a smile.

Schonert followed in the footsteps of the man who'd trained him, his father.

Hans Gunther Gustav Otto Karl Schonert trained as a watchmaker in post-war Germany, and arrived in South Africa in 1950 with an empty suitcase. He worked at Feldman’s Jewellers in Bloemfontein, where he married the boss’s daughter, before setting up his own shop in Eshowe, which operated between 1965 and 1995.

More than 40 years since Schonert learnt his trade at his father’s side, he is grappling with fitting into a new country far from Africa.

“I feel like a caged lion here,” he says. “I had a life of fishing, jet skis, boating and walking on the beach.”

The trip that said it all happened on the River Avon after an invite from his Worcestershire neighbours to join in some “wild swimming” as they call it — in the river.

“It was a bit tame, yet they all thought it was wonderful. I simply said: ‘Have you tried a category five rapid on the Zambezi? Because I have!’”