IT was, without much doubt, one of the worst examples of civic planning ever to be inflicted on Worcester. To borrow a Royal phrase – ie the words of Prince Charles – the multi-storey car park in Friar Street is like a carbuncle on the face of the city’s most authentic medieval thoroughfare. Because it was slipped in during the wholescale redevelopment of the adjoining area in the 1960s, possibly the brains at the time thought no one would notice. And in a sense they were right, because as far as I can recall, there has never been a concerted campaign to do much about it. So its ugly concrete protrusions continue to stick out like a nasty boil on the nose of your favourite granny.
NOT a lot of people may know this, but Worcester can lay a very decent claim to being the oldest inhabited settlement in the UK. Its history stretches back around 5,000 years and even as recently as the late 1600s it was the largest town in the Midlands. Back then Birmingham was a market town half the size, so too was Gloucester, while Warwick and Lichfield were considerably smaller still. In 1678 Worcester had a population of more than 10,000, which also put Nottingham (7,000) and Leicester and Coventry (both 6,000) well in the shade. For many years the late Philip Barker, an eminent archaeologist, lived in the city and carried out several exhaustive studies into its origins. In the late 1960s, aerial photography revealed in astonishing detail evidence of the earliest habitation of the area about 5,000 years ago.