1926: Kenneth Charles was born to Charles and Lousia Williams in a 1-bed flat at 11 Bingfield Street, just off Caledonian Road. The entire street's been redeveloped so there's nothing to see here, other than a green plaque on the replacement house unveiled by Sheila Hancock in 2010.
1928: The family moved to Flat 14 on the third floor at Cromer House on Cromer Street, King's Cross.
These are Whidborne Buildings, erected by the East End Dwellings Company in 1891. Several of their philanthropic blocks survive along Cromer Street, with Kenneth's comprising over 200 small flats stacked around a central courtyard. In his day you could wander in and out at will but these days access is via three keypadded gates, also a significant amount of shrubbery has been planted in what would once have been a utilities and kickabout space, also signs now warn 'No Ball Games'. The flats overlooked Whidborne Street, which is still part-cobbled and with a proper throwback garage on the bend displaying the telephone number TER 4577. It's a rare inner London neighbourhood where you can still imagine how things would have looked in Kenneth's day, so long as you ignore the designer handbag shop on the corner, also the Italian restaurant and yoga studio that now bookend egress from the flats.
Cromer Street features heavily in the BBC documentary Comic Roots, filmed in 1983, in which Kenneth revisits his childhood haunts. It's a fabulously nostalgic look at life in the 30s and the 80s, and because Kenneth talks ten to the dozen crams a heck of a lot into 30 minutes. It was also shown on BBC4 last night so you can watch it now, plus it's on YouTube in full, thus a recommended way to celebrate today's centenary.
In the documentary KW remembers how his neighbours used to push their piano down the street to The Boot for a communal singalong, and that trad boozer is still there today should you fancy a birthday pint over roast lamb shank. I did wonder if Ken and chums would have played in the gardens behind Holy Cross church across the street, but no that was all houses in their day and is now just a bombsite nobody's ever built over.
1931: Kenneth didn't have to go far for his early education, barely a one minute walk round the corner to Manchester Street School. It's very Edwardian and five storeys high to cram in as many classrooms as possible in a restricted space. It was while here that an English teacher suggested Kenneth take part in the school play 'The Rose and the Ring' (a story he'd later tell on Jackanory) and he duly stole the show as Princess Angelica. These days it's Argyle Primary, this because Manchester Street has since been renamed Argyle Street, and I note they're both a Beacon Peace Promoting School and proud holders of a TfL bronze.
1935: The Williams clan went up in the world when Charlie took over a hairdressing shop on Marchmont Street, close to what's now the Brunswick Centre in Bloomsbury, with Kenneth taking the bedroom on the top floor. His Dad's speciality was doing Marcel waves, as signalled by a wiggly wig in the front window. Number 57 is still a hairdressers today but they do highlights and restorative conditioning, which wouldn't have been the Williams style at all, and the price of a gent's cut has shot up to £34. In 2010 a blue plaque was unveiled above the shampoo-stacked window amid much pizazz with Nicholas Parsons amongst the invited guests. The screed confirms that Kenneth lived here from 1935 to 1956 which, even allowing for wartime shenanigans in the Far East, makes it the longest-serving of all his residences.
This short section of Marchmont Street boasts a dazzling array of blue plaques including painter William Henry Hunt, poet William Empson, actor Emlyn Williams and composer William Reeve as well as our birthday boy, suggesting an astonishing density of famous Williams. There's also a plaque for Mark Ashton from action group Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners, as seen in the film Pride, who met in a room above the Gay's The Word bookshop. That's still trading at number 66 across the street, plus the pedestrian crossings up the street are painted in trans-friendly blue and pink, so it's likely a queer child growing up in a flat here today would feel a lot more welcomed by their inclusive environment.
1937: Kenneth's secondary education took place at Lyulph Stanley Central School in Camden, just round the corner from Mornington Crescent station. It looks very similar to Manchester Street, a tall brick warren with separate entrances for boys and girls. It's since become a primary school and been renamed Richard Cobden instead.
1939-ish: Kenneth's father took him out of school early to learn a trade, specifically as a mapmaker's draftsman at Stanfords in Covent Garden. The Blitz then intervened, triggering an evacuation to Bicester where Kenneth was billeted with a retired vet at 19 Sheep Street. We probably have Mr Chisholm to thank for KW's grasp of high culture, and perhaps for the fact he started a long-running diary in 1942. Kenneth turned 18 in 1944, joined the army and became a sapper in the Royal Engineers out East, transferring to the Combined Services Entertainment Unit after the war ended. But he still returned to Long Acre afterwards to continue his lithographic apprenticeship, at least until the lure of acting and showbiz drew him away for good.
These days the map shop is occupied by Lush dispensing bath bombs and other smellies, Stanfords having correctly deduced in 2018 that cartographic digitalisation was best confronted in a downsized store just round the corner.
1956: A regular part in Hancock's Half Hour finally raised enough cash for 30 year-old Kenneth to be able to move into his own flat. He paid £800 and on 25th March moved into 817 Endsleigh Court on Upper Woburn Place, again one street back from the Euston Road. While here he played the part of Private James Bailey in the very first Carry On film and also switched his radio allegiance to Beyond Our Ken. His house moves then come thick and fast. [map]
1959: Queen Alexandra Mansions, Hastings Street, King's Cross WC1 1960: 76 Park West, Kendal Street, Edgware Road W2 1963: 62 Farley Court, Allsop Place, Marylebone NW1 1970: Queen Alexandra Mansions, Hastings Street, King's Cross WC1 again
Kenneth Williams' officialblue plaque is at Farley Court, a mansion block on the east side of the housing conglomerate surrounding Baker Street station. He loved the view from the 9th floor, writing in his diary ‘My bedroom looks out over Regent's Park. The trees are turning now and the sight is beautiful. I can see all the traffic twinkling down the Marylebone Rd. It's all so marvellous, I could cry.’ But there was a downside in the street immediately below, specifically ‘the nits crowding round outside the waxworks. How I loathe them and Madame Tussaud’.
Those nits are still there, both the end of the queue snaking round the building for admittance and the tourists pouring out of what used to be the Planetarium having spent a fortune in the shop. They linger on the pavement, shelter in Farley Court's lobby and generally get in the way of things, unsure which iconic attraction to visit next. The traffic noise remains bad and this soon niggled the ever-crabby Kenneth Williams. But it was the increasingly unaffordable rent that eventually drove him out, that and the opportunity to grab a flat immediately opposite his elderlymother, who despite not being in the best of health would ultimately outlive him.
1972: Kenneth's last move was to yet another mansion block, this time at 8 Marlborough House on Osnaburgh Street, two minutes north of Great Portland Street station. A friend once described it as 'punishingly spartan', as if living here were more a trial to be endured than a reward for a successful life. A multitude of media appearances followed, each an opportunity to pay the rent and to bask in brief adulation, and whenever he recorded Just A Minute he loved to say that he'd "come all the way from Great Portland Street". But health issues dragged him down, notably an inflamed stomach ulcer, and his diaries record progressive unhappiness. On 15th May 1988 Kenneth Williams was found dead in his apartment following an overdose of barbiturates, the coroner ultimately unable to decide if it was accidental or suicide, and alas at the age of just 62 the talented, waspish boy from King's Cross was taken from us.
Kenneth Williams' final flat no longer stands, having been demolished in 2007 to make way for the Regent's Place development. This shiny glass 'innovation campus' beside the Euston Road is about as unKenneth as you can get, all forward-looking and mirthless, so don't waste your time coming here if you want to celebrate his 100th birthday today.
Better ways to celebrate include:
• Several programmes have appeared on the iPlayer including a 90 minute documentary, his star-packed Wogan stand-in, a collection of Parkinsons, a 1975 tour of Bloomsbury, and that Comic Roots I mentioned.
• Six hours of archive programming are being broadcast today on Radio 4 Extra. Six hours! There are 23 segments altogether, from Desert Island Discs to Round the Horne, plus several short interviews with superfan Wes Butters. From 6am to noon they're all being broadcast separately, then repeated from noon til six and six til midnight in one mega-downloadable chunk.
• You may remember Wes Butters as the Radio 1 chart show's youngest ever DJ in 2003 aged 23. He's now obsessed by Williams, so much so so that he sneaked into Osnaburgh Street while it was being demolished, acquired all Williams private papers off his godson, has written a coffee table book and has made a biographical film premiered earlier this month at the Cinema Museum. Go Wes.
• I skipped over Kenneth's ongoing contribution to British television, but Ian Jones has just published a 12000-word analysis on his new blog so best read that.
• Or grab a copy of Kenneth Williams' agonisingly frank diaries, as edited by Russell Davies, for four decades of retrospection from before he was well known to after he thought he was worthless. We all know better, but alas it's too late for that.
Evesham is a historic market town in southeast Worcestershire, three times the size of Pershore and six miles upriver. It was founded when a Saxon abbey was built at the heart of a particularly sinuous meander on the River Avon, wisely picking the one spot that tends not to flood. A medieval high street followed, an early Parliamentarian died here in battle, and so many historic relics survive that the town feels the need to list them on a swish black and gold sign by the old abbey gate. [Visit Evesham][20 photos]
Best start with the Abbey. It was founded in 702AD by Egwin, Bishop of Worcester, after a swineherd reported seeing a vision of the Virgin Mary within the large meander. Egwin claimed to see it too, thus was either a saint or a bloody good liar, and the tale whereby he miraculously found the key to his shackles in the belly of a fish suggests he was a sneaky conjuror as well. The abbey grew to be one of the largest in England, none of which saved it when Henry VIII made his Dissolution landgrab and very little now remains. The finest remnant is the Evesham Bell Tower, a tall freestanding belfry rebuilt in the 1530s which acted as the belltower for the Abbey and two adjacent churches. It has a peal of ten bells and still chimes the hour in an impressive manner, all the better if you happen to be walking through the passageway underneath at the time.
The grounds of the Abbey have become a large park, central to the town, with a large upper terrace sweeping down to riverside lawns. Abbey Park boasts fine flowerbeds, a lily pool and multiple play areas, also small tiles in the grass marking the footprint of monkish buildings, also the sculpture of a penny-whistle-playing minstrel down by the waterside. The most recent public addition is a Cloister Garden gifted to the town by a local landowner, opened three years ago on the site of the cloister and nave. You walk in through an effigy-edged arch, pass silhouettes of monks and enter a peaceful walled zone that'll look considerably lovelier once the trellises are fully overgrown. I had it all to myself, the half-term crowds keener on skateboarding, seesawing and generally loitering further down.
The other attractive Abbey leftover is the Almonry, the 14th century building from which monks would hand out alms - essentially Evesham's first Foodbank. It survived Henry's demolition order only because it became the personal home of the last Abbot, and looks gorgeously old with its half-timbered walls and Cotswold Stone tiles. The tin roof is only temporary while urgentrestorationworks attempt to get the deteriorating building off the Heritage At Risk list before parts of it fall down or crumble away, an Arts Council grant doing the economic heavy lifting. Alas this also means the town's museum is closed, potentially for at least two years, and the teensy display in the relocated Tourist Information Centre across the road is scant recompense. It continues my unfortunate run of visiting farflung market towns while their museums are under renovation, and I had to make do with a swift look at the medieval stocks in the garden out front instead.
An even older structure is Reginald's Gateway, Reginald being Evesham's Abbot in the early 13th century, although the attractive timber building across the top is 'only' Tudor. The gateway leads from All Saints' Church towards the Market Square via the most characterful half-timbered alleyway in town. This contains the entirely unexpected Ye Olde Baked Potato Shoppe which looks like it's been piling coleslaw on melted butter since Elizabethan times. A sign above confirms it's occupied by "Evesham's Original Spud Man, est 1989" (so more Liz II than Liz I), but in fact the impressively basic eatery only moved here in 2023 (so is really more Charles III). Imagine if anywhere in London sold a baked potato topped with roast pork, stuffing, apple and crackling for £3.80, and then pray poncy metropolitan chains never expand to smother provincial cuisine.
Evesham's retail offering is holding up along the main streets but also shows signs of significant decline. I turned up on market day but found Market Square empty and a paltry few stalls in the high street, which isn't what James I's charter intended. The half-timbered RoundHouse is the oldest bank building in the UK, but is currently absolutely smothered in scaffolding before Nat West abandon the town for good. What with Santander also closing down in April that'll just leave Lloyd's and Nationwide or a 15 mile drive to Cheltenham. As for the extremely-80s Riverside Centre, it's easily one of the most depressing shopping malls I've ever visited, so much so I had to walk through it twice. Less than five of its 40 units are still trading, the food court leaks and the walkways are blighted with broken glass and unswept litter. The council's imminent intention is to redevelop the site into a "mixed-use residential, leisure and retail development" and I hope they find somewhere to hang the town's quirky Millennium Clock, currently languishing up a vacant arm.
Across the river is the separate settlement of Bengeworth, originally outside the Abbey's influence and joined to Evesham via an 8-arch medieval bridge. That was so narrow a woman got crushed by a passing cart in 1850, leading to its replacement by the current Workman Bridge (named after the Mayor at the time, not the construction team). From its balustrade I looked down across the wider-than-normal Avon overspilling into the riverside gardens and tried to imagine how much worse it must have been when the adjacent shops got flooded in 2007 and several caravans got jammed in the bridge's arches. I had been intending to walk two miles of riverside promenade but decided against, the paths intermittently overwashed by brown water and the watermeadows more water than meadow in several places.
But I did make it to the end of Boat Lane where an 800 year-old ferry still crosses the Avon. Its original purpose was to allow monks to reach their vineyards on the western bank, then later it became the swiftest method to reach the village of Hampton. These days the Hampton Ferry is an archaic service manually operated by pulling on a cable suspended across the river, although all I saw above the waterline was the winch. It's also seasonal so there's no chance of crossing again until the spring, although the operator's restaurant still opens daily should you fancy a hot beverage, a plant-based fishless finger baguette or 'Something on Toast'. I was surprised to see a large estate of 200 new houses under construction on adjacent meadow, hopefully above the flood level, and intrigued that part of the long term plan is to add a proper footbridge slightly upriver which'd probably kill off the ferry for good.
The town's chief contribution to British history is as the site of the Battle ofEvesham in 1265. Henry III had been captured by his barons the previous year and England was now ruled by a gathering of nobles under the leadership of Simon de Montfort, effectively our very first Parliament. When Prince Edward escaped his clutches a royalist army duly marched to meet de Montfort's troops at Evesham and on 4th August battle was joined on a hillside a mile to the north of the town. You get there by walking up the high street, continuing past the station and on up a suburban incline to where the big houses are. A barely-marked path then leads out into open countryside on the brow of the slope, this the site of the decisive skirmish which became inevitable when Simon's reinforcements failed to arrive.
Here at what's now known as Battlewell, de Montfort was first unhorsed, then hacked to death and dismembered. The royalist army showed no mercy to any of his troops, nor to the townspeople who'd sheltered him and it's said the Abbey ran with blood. Most of the battlefield remains undeveloped although at present you're only allowed to follow a permissive path down to the edge of a muddy field, the commemorative obelisk concealed by trees. I yomped through untroubled by any other visitors, the sounds of slaughter replaced by occasional birdsong, eventually emerging with far muddier boots on the main road by the out-of-town Tesco. Prince Edward later became Edward I and decided it would be wise to summon Parliament as a permanent institution, thereby establishing representative government and the earliest seeds of democracy.
Meanwhile Simon de Montfort was buried in Evesham Abbey and although that's long gone his burial site is still marked by a memorial in Abbey Gardens, his goal of a constitutional monarchy ultimately met. Not bad for a small Cotswold market town 90 miles from Westminster.
✉ Wyre Piddle is a small village in Worcestershire just upriver from Pershore. It really is called that.
✉ Wyre Piddle is a pleasant village, mostlylinear, squished between the river Avon on one side and the railway on the other. It's old enough to have been named in the Domesday Book, then called Pidele. It has a pub, a church and a population of about 600. It's neither of great consequence nor especially visitworthy, just nice. And it really is called that.
✉ It's called Wyre Piddle because it's on the Piddle Brook. The Piddle Brook rises near Inkberrow and flows for about 14 miles past Flyford Flavell, North Piddle and Naunton Beauchamp to join the River Avon at Wyre Piddle. Inkberrow is sometimes thought to be the inspiration for Ambridge in The Archers, in which case a better name for the fictional village might be Piddlebridge.
✉ The UK's greatest concentration of Piddles is in Dorset on the River Piddle. This flows through the villages of Piddletrenthide and Piddlehinton to join the River Frome near Wareham. It also flows through Puddletown, Tolpuddle, Affpuddle, Briantspuddle and Turners Puddle, all of which were originally piddles rather than puddles before 19th century prudes forced a name change.
✉ Piddle is thought to be a Saxon word for a small stream or tiny flow, although it's unclear whether the comparison with urination came before or after.
✉ This is what the Piddle Brook looked like at Wyre Piddle earlier in the week, although it's normally a lot lower than this. The bridge here was widened and reconstructed in 1930 but retained parts of the original structure because this has long been part of a main road between Worcester and Evesham.
✉ I arrived in Wyre Piddle an hour after the Environment Agency lowered their red flood warning (flooding is expected) to an amber flood alert (flooding is possible). Seems they were a bit premature because I had been intending to walk down Mill Lane to Pershore but the road was still underwater so I had to turn round and go back the way I came. This is why I ended up spending so much time in Wyre Piddle.
✉ This driver has just spotted the flooding at the top of Mill Lane and is thinking better of it. He was probably driving to the marina at Wyre Mill, a former watermill now occupied by a clubful of boating types. This is where Toyah Willcox used to come sailing at weekends with her parents, staying in a caravan by the marina.
✉ I'd love to have seen the mill again but the floodwater meant I never got anywhere close. I last boated past on a chilly Saturday morning in September 1984, negotiating the lock by the weir while several of my friends slept off their hangovers.
✉ The weir has been here for over 1000 years, indeed 'wyre' originally meant weir, hence Wyre Piddle means weir by the small stream and is thus absolutely nothing to laugh at.
✉ Wyre Piddle has some really lovely 15th century timber cottages, great hulking things with thatched roofs, whitened brick and dormer windows. Generally the oldest buildings face the river because that's where the action was, and the subsequent infill is across the road.
✉ The village has a lot of listed buildings, mostly strung out along the river with a cluster by the pub. Manor House is 17th century with an overhanging gable. Ivy Cottage's thatch looks a bit mossy at the moment.
✉ The Anchor Inn is a long low Georgian public house, once again offering traditional cuisine after kitchen problems last month. Alas it no longer serves pints of 'Piddle in The Hole', not since the Wyre Piddle brewery was dissolved in 2015. If the weather's fine you can drink outside on a rear terrace in the 'Piddle Beach Garden'.
✉ A foot ferry used to cross the Avon just alongside the pub, long since closed but there's still a lengthy pointless footpath on the opposite bank.
✉ You can't easily get to the river unless you own one of the houses backing onto it. The sole public access is at the far end of Church Street in Smith's Meadow, but on my visit the top half was full of dogs and the bottom half full of water so I gave it a miss.
✉ St Anne's church is Norman with an original chancel arch, medieval altar slab and replica font. You can feel how old and unaltered it is as you step inside, a simple stone nave with a cell-like altar space at the far end, just how most English churches used to be. SPAB very much approved. St Anne's is usually open from 10 til 4, which is considerably more often than it hosts services.
✉ It's been a very long time since Wyre Piddle had a shop and even longer since it had a Post Office. If you want groceries you need to walk half a mile up Wyre Hill (no footpath) to the service station by the roundabout which has an Asda Express, Starbucks and Greggs. That's a pretty good selection for a small village, but technically that village is Pinvin not Wyre Piddle because these are Pinvin Services.
✉ Regular events at the Village Hall include Puppy School (Monday), Tuesday & Coffee (Tuesday), Over 60s Keep Fit (Thursday) and Yoga (Friday). The Wyre Piddle WI meet monthly.
✉ The Preaching Cross at the village T-junction is "a good example of a medieval standing cross with a square stepped base", and is surmounted by a 19th century knob and iron cross head. Three spook-like metal bollards prevent careless drivers from accidentally demolishing the structure.
✉ If you're interested in road numbering, you've hit the jackpot with Wyre Piddle. It used to be on the B4084, the less important road between Evesham and Worcester, while the main A44 ran to the south of the Avon and crossed the river at Pershore. But the B4084 still funnelled a lot of traffic through the heart of Wyre Piddle, being more direct, which fair dampened village life. Thankfully a Wyre Piddle bypass opened in 2002, and proved so good they swapped the road numbers so that the B4084 now runs through Pershore and the A44 runs north of the river via the bypass.
✉ Lorries aiming for the Pershore Trading Estate still had to drive down Wyre Hill and enact a hairpin turn by Piddle Bridge, this V-shaped road renumbered the B4083. So in 2022 the council built an extra link road over the railway bypassing Wyre Piddle entirely, the old fork now mysteriously labelled A4538 instead.
✉ To stop traffic taking a shortcut through Wyre Piddle the council's had to add a barrier near the railway bridge which supposedly only lets through buses, cycles and emergency vehicles. It's made the entire village a dead end, which must be annoying for residents trying to drive to Evesham but hasn't stopped villagers getting their speedwatch cameras out and moaning anyway. Graphs of actual and average speeds are published monthly.
✉ Wyre Piddle used to have a station called Wyre Halt, opened in 1934, but Beeching culled it in 1966. Pershore station is just over a mile away but you really wouldn't to walk it after dark.
✉ 20 years ago Wyre Piddle had an hourly bus service to Pershore and Evesham but is now down to one circuitous timewaster a day allowing 90 minutes shopping time in Evesham, a service that's practically unusable.
✉ More people live on my London street than in Wyre Piddle and yet you'll find far more of a community feeling here, what with clubs and gatherings and Brian's Charity Quiz and the summer fete, not to mention Chocolate Bingo with a Fish And Chip Supper at the village hall next month. If you want a great social life, move to a village.
✉ Thank you for holding out to the end for a few more Piddle references. The monthly village newsletter is called Piddle Post. The monthly film night at the village hall is called Piddle Pics. And a few doors down is Wee Wee Cottage, official address Wee Wee Cottage, Wyre Piddle WR10 2HR, and what a laugh the owner must have had when they renamed it.
✉ Wyre Piddle is a small village in Worcestershire just upriver from Pershore. It really is called that.
Pershore is a small market town in Worcestershire and one of several fictional candidates for Borchester in The Archers. It's not quite in the Cotswolds, more the Vale of Evesham, a floodably fertile plain much favoured by market gardeners (as we saw yesterday). The river hereabouts is the Avon, as in Stratford-upon-, which was very much overspilling earlier in the week and thus limiting exploration potential somewhat. But I still got around to see many of the town's finest features, most of which you could list under the headings 'abbey', 'river' and 'Georgian'. [VisitPershore][town map][18 photos]
abbey
Pershore's Saxon monastery got the full Abbey upgrade in the 12th century when the Normans piled in. Alas the building suffered several subsequent catastrophes including two fires, the collapse of the north transept and Henry VIII, so what's left is a stunted building that ought to be larger. The tower was saved by local townspeople after the Dissolution, also the quire where the monks sang which was reformulated into a nave, also the south transept. But the surviving chunk is still impressive enough and also free to wander round, that is once you've stopped admiring it from outside.
The nave has intricate ploughshare vaulting, also carved stone roof bosses which would look even more splendid had the Victorians not decided to 'clean' them by washing off the brightly coloured paint. The transept has effigy-topped tombs of abbots and crusaders nobody's quite sure of the name of. The bookstall has a particularly wide collection of cards for 80th, 90th and 100th birthdays, though not 20ths and 30ths hinting at the age of the congregation. The truly unique feature interior is the bell-ringing platform which is a cube-shaped chamber suspended 30m off the ground inside the tower, propped up only by four horizontal supports. It was added by George Gilbert Scott and can only be accessedvia two spiral staircases, a walkway through the roof, a squeeze through a narrow passage and a see-through iron staircase down into the cage. Safer to just look up.
The abbey is surrounded by Pershore's only proper park and watched over by an iron horse. The Warhorse Memorial Sculpture was created by a local blacksmith, is made from recycled horseshoes is meant as a tribute to all the fallen animals across two worldwide conflicts. It was unveiled in 2019 (in pouring rain) and since then Armistice ceremonies have also been attended by a lot of poppy-clad folk on horseback. A few other sculptures are scattered around the wider site, my favourite being Peter Inchbald's two-sided Moon Goddess in St Andrew's Gardens (even if I'm not sure how the lunar disc can have a crescent hole).
river
The Avon rules life in Pershore which is why you can't see it from the town centre. Locals worked out centuries ago it was safest to live on the slightly higher land alongside and let their long gardens stretch down to the river because it didn't matter if they flooded. Pershore is also the sole bridging point for miles, the earliest wooden crossing finally replaced in stone in the 15th century after the Abbot got washed away and drowned. The five-arched sandstone bridge is a rare medieval survivor, although the central span had to be rebuilt after Royalist troops ineptly destroyed it while fleeing from Parliamentarians during the Civil War. The narrow span proved increasingly impractical for road traffic so a proper concrete span was built alongside in 1926, but you can still walk across the jaggedy original as a short deviation from the main road. Even during flooding, blimey.
I once passed under thisbridge on a canal boat but you couldn't possibly do that at the moment because river levels are too high. Instead I watched an inexorable flow of brown water rushing through the central arch with maybe a metre's headroom, and understood why additional 'flood arches' had been built to either side to help ease peak flow. Normally this is a peaceful picnic spot with a footpath leading out across the meadows, and whilst the tables remained safely dry the path was a washout with substantial bankside undergrowth submerged beneath the water. It got worse than this in 2024 and far worse in 2007, the Avon occasionally capable of regional paralysis. But even at current levels the adjacent bridges at Eckington and Fladbury become impassable, and the Environment Agency employ flap-down yellow signs in the town centre to point to the diversions.
It could be worse were it not for the Avon Meadows Community Wetland a mile upriver. After the floods in 2007 additional water storage was carved out of the grass and several large reed beds dug as part of one of the UK's first urban sustainable drainage schemes. Not only does it do its job but it looks good too, doubles as a nature reserve and is intriguing to explore. I reached the boardwalk without too much trouble, stepping out through head-high reeds past a pair of inquisitive swans and a dipping pool. But the ground beyond was sodden, then decidedly underwater, so best come any time other than a wet winter if you want to see the river's edge where it should be, at its best.
Georgian
Pershore brands itself as a Georgian town and retains a very impressive run of period houses down the main street. They kick off abruptly by the Toll House on Bridge Street, where carts and coaches were once charged sixpence to cross the Avon if they were drawn by three horses, and which is currently on the market for £¼m. Further up the road The Star is a former coaching inn, The Angel contains salty Tudor boating timbers and The Brandy Cask used to be a wool warehouse. One of the most unusual buildings used to be The Three Tuns Hotel, hence the twiddly Regency ironwork, and has a plaque saying the future Queen Victoria stayed here overnight in 1830. It's now the town's most metropolitan pub and has been renamed after Claude Choules, the oldest combat veteran of the First World War, who was born in Bridge Street in 1901 and died in Australia at the record-breaking age of 110.
Some of the finer buildings don't have quite the pedigree you'd expect. The local arts centre (called Number 8) was created inside the innards of the former Co-op and now has raked seating. The Town Hall doesn't dazzle because it was originally commissioned as a post office, which to be fair is a decent size when you're only administering to a population of of 8500. Upstairs is where you'll find the town's museum, the Pershore Heritage Centre, although it only opens between Easter and October so I never got to see the Diamond Jubilee spade, the model train cabinet or the Titanic survivor's hat. But possibly the greatest surprise is that the large Georgian townhouse at the very start of Bridge Street is the home of former punkstress Toyah Willcox.
The Birmingham-born singer first grew to love the area when her parents bought a boat at nearby Wyre Marina, spending most of their weekends afloat. She moved here properly in 2002 along with husband Robert Fripp, King Crimson's offbeat guitarist, and has been known to kayak round her back garden if the river's high enough. You can catch a glimpse inside their quirky home by watching some of the couple's effusive Sunday lunch videos, seemingly recorded in the kitchen. Nobody can say It's A Mystery why she bought this pivotal property, it's because she loves living bang opposite the heart of a genuine market town. Alas these days Broad Street only looks like a marketplace once a month when stalls replace the usual stripe of car park so I didn't see it at its best, also the temporary traffic lights outside Tesco led to far too many queueing vehicles in many of my photographs.
Wychavon
Pershore is the administrative centre of Wychavon, largest and most southeasterly of the six Worcestershire districts. Though the town's much smaller than Droitwich and Evesham it's also more central, hence the council decided to build their Civic Centre here in 1991. With local government reorganisation imminent Wychavon's days are numbered, and I wonder how long it'll take this quirky name to disappear off signs, buildings and bins.
plums
Dip into the basket of market garden produce and you'll find Pershore is best known for its plums. Legend says a publican called George Crook discovered the famous Yellow Egg plum while walking through Tiddesley Woods in 1827 and within a few years it was being farmed widely in the area. Then in 1877 a Diamond/Prolific cross created the Pershore Purple, and these days a multitude of varieties are grown locally. Several plum-themed pubs and tearooms can be found in the town, but to get truly stoned best visit on August Bank Holiday weekend to experience the annual Plum Festival at which the mascots Prunella (purple) and Eggbert (yellow) invariably make an appearance.
station
Pershore station is a big disappointment, a single track halt served by hourly trains whose buildings were all demolished in the 1960s before the line was ultimately reprieved. It's also a mile and a half from the town centre with barely any bus connections, indeed officially in the neighbouring village of Pinvin, and surrounded not by houses but a large industrial estate. On the bright side it has a nice heritage sign in bold block capitals and Sir John Betjeman once wrote a poem about it, but otherwise substandard in every way.
I bought a cheap rail ticket in a sale at the start of the year, keeping my fingers crossed that 17th February would be a fine day. Thankfully it was so I've just come back from a fine day out. Normally at this point I'd tell you all about it but I got back quite late and there wasn't time. I will tell you all about it but for now let me tell you about the journey, not because it was interesting but because I haven't been on enough long journeys recently.
0615: It's always a relief when your alarm clock goes off at the right time on a day trip. It'd be all too easy to set it wrong and sleep in and miss your train, wasting all that money you spent seven weeks ago. 0645: It's always a balancing act putting just enough into a rucksack (food, reading material, thermos) but not so much it weighs you down all day. 0655: Don't touch the barrier with your usual card, it doesn't work this early. 0700: It's always a relief when the tube's running properly on a day you've bought a special rail ticket, so you are going to get to the departure station in time and won't be wasting all that money you spent seven weeks ago. 0705: The bloke sitting opposite gets out his smoking paraphernalia to prepare a roll-up, then drops his bag and spills poundsworth of tobacco all over the carriage floor, then scoops most of it back into his bag and prepares a tarnished roll-up.
0745: I asked for a forward-facing window seat. Instead they reserved me a backward-facing seat unaligned with any window. All that lovely scenery out there and I'm staring at a grey bulkhead with a thin sliver of outside. 0810: The guard is selling a standard ticket to a tourist who's boarded without buying one. That ticket costs them £93 return, which is five times what I paid and he's only going half as far. 0820: Denise does an announcement apologising for the limited catering, She's prioritising first class and the rest of us won't get a full service until the last fifteen minutes of the train's journey when the crew changes over. 0840: Most of the passengers on board pile off, so I take the opportunity to sneak into a proper window seat - that's better. 0841: A young lad boards the train and dives into the viewless seat I just vacated, despite there now being loads of other spare seats. Fool, I think, but over the next hour he never takes his eyes off his phone so he's missing nothing.
0900: When I booked this ticket, aiming for a riverside town, the weather was sub-zero and wintry. Since then it's rained almost non-stop and the landscape outside the window is now seriously flooded, all overspilled rivers and underwater meadows and puddled fields. Doesn't bode well for later. 0900: A second ticket check, but this time it's civilians in tabards doing a 'ticket audit'. 0930: I'm wearing walking boots, but maybe I should have brought wellies. 0945: The guard walks down the platform holding a quiche. 0950: I've got a lot of reading done.
I then walked around Town One for three hours. Only one road was so flooded that I had to turn round and go back the way I came. I surprised a birdwatcher in a purple anorak. I saw plenty of snowdrops. I did not see the famous pop star. The lady in the Tourist Information Office was lovely. The bridge was quite something. I noted that 'large cod' in the local chippie is only £8.90 so we're being fleeced in London. I spotted the pub I didn't go to in 1984.
1300: I caught the bus from Town One to Town Two. Fares outside London are still £3, mostly. The next stops were announced very loudly, and quite early.
I then walked around Town Two for three hours. Only one path was so flooded that I had to turn round and go back the way I came, but a lot were very muddy. I heard a lot of birdsong. The lady in the Tourist Information Office was brusque. I noted that 'large cod' in the local chippie is only £8.95 so we're being fleeced in London. I chatted to a man called Robert who said the flooding was worse yesterday. I didn't spot the newsagent where I bought a copy of Record Mirror in 1984.
1700: The return trip wasn't especially noteworthy.
The last time I was in the area was 40 years ago, just after leaving university. I'd somehow made some cool friends there, one of whom lived in Hillingdon and one of who lived on a farm outside Town One. So First Friend and I decided to drive out to the farm and surprise Second Friend, mainly because we only had an address not a telephone number so couldn't warn him in advance. First Friend was so cool he had a Rover 800 and had been employed to steward at the final Wham! concert two weeks earlier. It was a three hour drive and on the way we stopped off so First Friend could buy some Insignia gel and I could buy Second Friend a Toblerone as a thankyou. We also stopped off at a local phonebox to ring Directory Enquiries, but the number they gave us turned out to be Second Friend's gran so wasn't much use.
Second Friend was extremely surprised to see us, lumbering around the farm in his wellies near the polytunnels. We joined in with the day's work in the top field which involved sitting on the back of a tractor-pulled contraption and planting savoy cabbages. Sorry, we put some of them in upside-down. After 24 rows we went switched jobs and picked some courgettes, then hitched a ride back to the farmhouse on the back of a truck. Second Friend's mum was very pleased to see us and served up cake and raspberries, I think pleased her son had genuinely made some friends. We overscrutinised the contents of his bedroom, sat round the Aga in the kitchen and got an invite to his sister's next big party. For a surprise visit it all went surprisingly well, plus when we finally got home I was able to give my Dad seven courgettes and a savoy cabbage. I sometimes wonder if my social life peaked right there.
Today is Shrove Tuesday, Chinese New Year and the start of Ramadan.
How unusual is that?
Very unusual, obviously.
But also perhaps not ridiculously improbable because all three special days are connected to the moon.
And if a new moon crops up in mid-February it's going to be a possibility.
Let's start with Chinese New Year.
The Chinesecalendar follows these two basic rules:
• Months start on the day of a new moon (Beijing time).
• The 11th month always contains the winter solstice.
The 12th month thus starts on the first new moon after the winter solstice.
That's the last month of the year.
So Chinese New Year is always the second new moon after the winter solstice.
This can be any date between 21st January and 20th February.
And that's the easy one.
This year
The winter solstice fell on 21st December 2025.
The new moon on 20th December didn't count.
The first new moon after the winter solstice was on 19th January 2026.
The second new moon after the winter solstice is on 17th February 2026.
Which is today - Kung hei fat choi!
OK, on to pancakes.
Shrove Tuesday is the day before Lent, i.e. the day before Ash Wednesday.
It always occurs 47 days before Easter.
The gap is six weeks and five days, always from a Tuesday to a Sunday.
Easter Day can fall anywhere between 22nd March and 25th April.
So Shrove Tuesday can be any date between 3rd February and 9th March.
Chinese New Year and Shrove Tuesday can thus only overlap in the period 3rd February to 20th February.
i.e. you need a late Chinese New Year and an early Easter.
Specifically Easter has to fall between 22nd March and 8th April.
If Easter is 9th April or later then Shrove Tuesday and Chinese New Year don't mix.
But if Easter is before 9th April, it's not unlikely they overlap.
That's because Chinese New Year is the day of a new moon, and Easter is the Sunday after a full moon.
That gap from new moon to full moon is 1½ lunar months, or 44 days.
And if the 47th day happens to be a Sunday that's when the coincidence happens.
This year
🌑New 17th Feb → 🌕Full 3rd Mar → 🌑New 19th Mar → 🌕Full 2nd Apr
Thursday 2nd April is the first full moon after the spring equinox.
The next Sunday is Sunday 5th April, which is Easter Day.
And 47 days before that is Tuesday 17th February, which is both Shrove Tuesday and a new moon.
I've checked all the years in the 20th and 21st centuries.
And these are all the years when Chinese New Year coincides with Shrove Tuesday.
That's 22 years out of 200, or 11% of the time.
It may seem unfamiliar because it last happened way back in 2002.
But it's due to happen again very soon, in 2029.
There's often only a three year gap between Chinese New Years also being Shrove Tuesday.
And roughly speaking they coincide one year in ten.
Which brings us to the first day of Ramadan.
Ramadan is the ninth month of the Islamic calendar.
Like Chinese New Year, it starts with a new moon.
However it's not always in winter, it moves repeatedly through the seasons.
That's because Islamic years always contains 12 lunar months, with no leap days or leap months to get things back in sync.
They're always 354 or 355 days long, i.e. about 11 days shorter than our calendar year.
Last year: 🌑New Moon 28th February
This year: 🌑New Moon 17th February
Next year: 🌑New Moon 6th February
At the moment Ramadan's in February but it hits January in 2028 and December in 2030.
By 2040 it's retreated to September and by 2050 it's in May.
Only in 2058 does it again return to February and the period we're interested in.
A February Ramadan comes around only every 32 years or so.
Ramadan and Chinese New Year are both triggered by a new moon, remember.
So if Ramadan starts in the period 21st January to 20th February then it also coincides with Chinese New Year.
This happened in 1929/1930, then again in 1961/1962/1963, then again in 1994/1995.
It's happening in 2026 and will again in 2027 and 2028.
And it'll next happen in 2059/2060/2061 and 2091/2092/2093.
But for Ramadan, Chinese New Year AND Shrove Tuesday to coincide the window is much smaller.
This time we need a full moon in the period 3rd February to 20th February.
That rules out 1929, 1963, 1995, 2028, 2060, 2061 and 2093.
But we also need that full moon to be on a Tuesday.
And it turns out 2026 is the only year that happens, at least in the 20th or 21st centuries.
It's not going to happen again until 2124.
You'll not be around the next time Shrove Tuesday is Chinese New Year and the first day of Ramadan.
But...
Ramadan is of course more complicated than that.
The month doesn't start at the new moon, it starts the day after that new moon is sighted.
And that brings all sorts of observational unpredictability into all this.
If you follow the Islamic calendar, observational unpredictability is a monthly fact of life.
A very new moon is incredibly hard to spot, being both very thin and very close to the Sun.
If an Islamic astronomer somehow spots the new moon today, Ramadan starts on Wednesday.
Or they might spot it the day after, in which case Ramadan starts on Thursday.
Every single new month in the Islamic calendar is essentially unpredictable until the night before.
It means today isn't the first day of Ramadan, sorry, just the full moon that triggers it.
And if Ramadan is always after the date of the full moon, it can never coincide with Chinese New Year.
Sorry, I appear to have wasted your time here.
Also I've failed to take into account the effect of time zones.
The Chinese Calendar assumes a prime meridian of 120°E, aligning with Beijing.
But Ramadan is based on local lunar observations, which here means 0°.
These are 8 hours apart, so a new moon after midnight in China is before midnight here, i.e. one day earlier.
It doesn't affect 2026, but in 2030 the key new moon is on 3rd February in China but 2nd February in Europe.
Also the date of Easter isn't based on the real full moon but an ecclesiastical full moon devised in the 4th century.
The whole thing is a mess, and trying to define simple rules and patterns doubly so.
It's all overly muddy so perhaps best not try.
But it IS true that Shrove Tuesday and Chinese New Year coincide this year.
And it's highly likely that the first day of Ramadan will coincide with Ash Wednesday instead.
Two celebrations take place today and two fasts start tomorrow.
And maybe those are the most appropriate coincidences of all.
For my next alphabetical visit to unsung suburbs we're off to Downham, an enormous LCC estate built 100 years ago to rehouse escapees from city slums. It sprawls across 500 undulating acres at the southern end of the borough of Lewisham (plus a sliver of Bromley), a web of interwar avenues with a fair few trees intertwined. The east side's near Grove Park station and the west side mostly untroubled by trains, so a rather harder commute, which may be why the place is mostly off-radar. It took me an hour and a half to circumnavigate yesterday and I was utterly soaked by the end, more like Pissing Downham, so when viewing the gloomy photos remember it doesn't always look like this.
Until 1924 all this was just two farms off the main road between Catford and Bromley. As perfectly undeveloped land it drew the attention of the London County Council seeking sites for overspill estates in southeast London, spurred on by government funding, so they bought up Holloway Farm and Shroffolds Farm and brought the diggers in. The first turf was cut in 1924, the King turned up for a public opening in 1927 and the whole place was finished in 1930 which isn't bad for a brand new suburb with six thousand homes. As no previous settlement existed the new estate was obsequiously named after Lord Downham, Chairman of the LCC. Houses were pleasant but lowly, generally two-storeys and run together into brick terraces of four or more, but a world away from what the new tenants had left behind. They loved the bathrooms, back gardens and semi-rural setting - definitely better than being sent to Becontree - and paid their 12 shilling rent with pride.
Planners essentially had a blank canvas and drew lines on their maps with gusto. A swooshing spine road called Downham Way linked the existing main roads to either side of the estate, this wide enough for trams, with a web of backstreets added beyond. Shops were eventually added at each end with a lesser parade in the centre, ten schools were liberally scattered and every Christian denomination got its own church. Greenspace was retained where appropriate, with the hilltop preserved as part a long sausage-shaped recreation ground. But it took a long time for some of these promised facilities to actually get built which wasn't ideal for a rapidly burgeoning population, and several early residents grew tired of the isolation and moved away. [1930s map]
A good place to start might be The Downham Tavern, the single watering hole at the heart of the estate, which with such a large catchment to serve was briefly the world's largest pub. Its monumental brick exterior contained two saloons, a public lounge, a beer garden, a ‘lunchroom’ and 34 bedrooms packed upstairs, all finished off with a dance hall nextdoor. It's said the two longest bars were both 45 feet long, which would help explain how the pub got a licence to serve 1200 people. Alas by the 1990s it was beyond refurbishment so Courage sold it to the Co-op who built a supermarket in the car park, then demolished the pub to create a larger car park. As part of the deal they built a rather smaller pub in the corner of the site, barely characterful apart from a squat wooden clocktower, and in 2024 even that dubious establishment closed down. Peering in you can almost imagine the tables set for Sunday lunch with Sky football blaring, if only it weren't actually Sunday lunchtime and patently obvious no cleaner's been inside for months.
Across the street were once Downham Baths and Downham Library, now combined as Downham Health and Leisure Centre. Lewisham council consolidated local services into one megahub 20 years ago, and whilst their intent was efficiency the resulting facility has all the aesthetic appeal of a recreational warehouse. Keep walking up the slope to reach the all-weather pitches, which I can confirm were thoroughly defeated by yesterday's cloudburst and firmly locked. And beyond that the hilltop opens out to reveal a grand vista looking across repetitive rooftops towards the Crystal Palace ridge and all the way round across Bromley. I don't think you can see the City from the summit of Durham Hill but I confess visibility yesterday was very poor, also paths are few and far between and I wasn't willing to squidge across the grass from the community orchard towards the broken bench and check fully.
But traipsing around Downham mainly involves an awful lot of residential streets. The finest face onto linear greens planted with mature trees, but most are part of long residential chains in brick (and occasionally pebbledash). They're nothing special but the architects did imbue them with sufficient variety to add character, perhaps a teensy porch or a geometric flourish in the masonry, though never a bay window or a garage, it being the 1920s rather than the 1930s. The local contours inevitably add more visual interest. What stands out is the uniformity of the living space within, this being an egalitarian estate where nobody got a one-bedder and nobody got four, just homes fit for the families of wartime heroes. The lack of parking spaces does mean most people have to park in the street, but equally those streets are capacious enough and don't feel too clogged.
One of the more dubious chapters in Downham's history involves the 'class wall' at the foot of Valeswood Road on the Lewisham/Bromley boundary. Back in February 1926 the developer of the adjacent estate resented the arrival of a council estate alongside his private development so built a seven-foot wall topped with broken glass across the top of Alexandra Crescent. It meant cutting off direct access to the local park but it also kept the plebs out so was deemed social necessary. Shamefully the wall remained in place until 1950, neither council willing to step in, and only a need for fire engine access finally reopened residents' convenient shortcut to Bromley town centre. All you'll find here now is the derelict shed of the Downham Gardens Guild, no longer dispensing horticultural supplies every Sunday, and some slightly nicer houses than anyone in Downham got.
You might know Downham from the Capital Ring, specifically the start of section3. This swoops in across the railway to pass the fire station... hang on no, Boris Johnson closed that in 2014 and it's been replaced by a long block of flats (a true 3-storey rarity round here). Next comes the Total Garage... hang on no, it's now Shell and with a whopping phone mast planted by the car wash. But beyond that everything's much as it ever was, including the other local recreational highlight which is the Downham Woodland Walk. This ¾-mile path zigzags round the back of umpteen houses and was originally a field boundary, hence all the mature trees. It's a bit of a rustic mirage because only this narrow strip got saved, but still a pleasant stroll and the best place locally to walk a dog. Yesterday however weather conditions were so atrocious that I met nobody for 15 minutes, bar a sporty Dad who'd brought his son to the playing fields for a kickabout only to find the gate locked so they drove straight home.
So comprehensively was Downham developed 100 years ago that it's rare to come across anything substantially new. One of the most jolting intrusions is a massive crescent-shaped wedge resembling either a driving range and/or an electric heater, this the result of a secondary school rebuild in 2005. But generally there isn't anything left to replace, just streets and streets of dependably average houses with modest back gardens in an appreciably green setting. It's no Garden City, as one local journalist optimistically wrote in 1930, but many Londoners would happily swap their stunted flats for a basic dwelling with a front door and proper neighbours. We don't build Downhams any more, London no longer has room, but a lot more large tracts of bogstandard social housing wouldn't go amiss.
12 things I didn't manage to shoehorn into the narrative: The Go Go Cobblers, a chip shop called Rock'N'Roe, the Greenwich Meridian, the somewhat elongated frontage of St Barnabas, the Spring Brook, Downham's slightly rounded streetsigns, Glenda Jackson's son's eye, the meandering 336 bus, His Glory Arena, the Glenbow Road traffic filter, King Arthur, the Splendid Cinema Suggested title for clickbait journalists cannibalising today's blogpost: The Secret Suburb Where You Can Buy A Co-op Limited Edition Spicy Tuna Sandwich On The Site Of The World's Largest Pub Ds I considered going to but didn't: Dartmouth Park, Dormers Wells, Drayton Green, Ducketts Green, Ducks Island, Dudden Hill
