Worcester is rich in schools, almshouses, and institutions, whose united incomes, representing a total of £4,000, speak much for the public spirit and large-hearted benevolence of the inhabitants.
The Museum and Natural History Society, in Foregate Street, to which visitors are admitted on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Saturdays, [{6}] with its collection of antiquities, fossils, and objects of natural history, should be visited. Also, the Arboretum and Public Pleasure Grounds, near Sansome Walk, where fêtes are given and bands frequently play. The grounds are tastefully laid out, portions being set apart for games of archery, cricket, bowls, and quoits. The usual admission fee is sixpence, but on Mondays they are free to the inhabitants.
In describing Worcester it would be unpardonable not to allude to its hops, from 2,000 to 3,000 pockets of which, it is said, not unfrequently change hands, in the market in the Foregate, during the season.
Glove making also is still one of the staple trades, nearly half a million being annually manufactured by Messrs. Dent and others.
Worcester is celebrated for Porcelain of a very superior kind; and facilities are afforded to strangers visiting the manufactory, both in Diglis, and in Lowesmoor. The productions of the former are highly esteemed by connoisseurs. The works have the good fortune to receive distinguished and even royal patronage; and the show-rooms form one of the attractions of the city.
The Iron trade, so far as regards the manufacture of bridges, machinery, and general castings, notwithstanding the distance from the iron making districts, is well represented by the Vulcan Works, and those of Messrs. Padmore and Hardy. Other establishments on a large scale have sprung into existence in the city and its suburbs, in which chemistry and machinery, singly or combined, produce results
the most astounding. Among them are those of Hill, Evans, and Co., where the visitor wanders amidst enormous vats, from which as many as 1,208,600 gallons of vinegar have been produced in a single year; and those of Lewis, Watkins, and Co., where a large portion of the vinegar is used in preparing pickles, and where hundreds of tons of preserved fruits and jam are annually produced for sale. There are also those of the well-known firm of Lea and Perrin; the chemical works of Webb; the extensive carriage manufactory of McNaught and Smith, and others upon which space forbids us to dwell.
The Severn supplies the inhabitants with water, which is purified by means of extensive filter-beds at the upper end of Pitchcroft, and then thrown by machinery to the top of Rainbow Hill, a position sufficiently elevated to ensure its distribution over the upper stories of the highest houses. The “Old Waterworks” remain, and, as will be seen from our sketch, form a picturesque object in the landscape. The Severn is, however, no longer the fast-flowing stream poets have described it, but what it has lost in speed it has gained in depth, breadth, and majesty; the locks and weirs at Diglis—the former two abreast, and the latter stretching 400 feet across the stream—giving to it the aspect of a lake, an aspect aided by the appearance upon its surface of a number of swans.
Its contrast with itself, whilst yet in its rocky cradle on Plinlimmon, will be seen from the accompanying sketch of Blaen Hafren, or the “Head of the River,” two miles from its source. Anglers will find pleasant spots at which to indulge in the “gentle art,” near Henwick, where the old Worcester monks had weirs; also near Bevere Island, and Holt Castle; at the confluence of the Severn with the Teme (two miles