Pershore has been called 'one of the fifty-one towns in the British Isles so splendid and so precious that the ultimate responsibility for them should be a national concern'.

Our tour begins in Broad Street at the hub of Pershore; here is where the High Street and Bridge Street meet whilst at the other end can be found Defford Road and Church Row, leading past the Abbey to Newlands. Broad Street is unusually wide because until 1836 there were some houses and a shambles in the centre. On one corner is the Royal Arcade shopping arcade.

The Three Tuns

A blue Civic Society plaque on the wall commemorates the fact that ‘this Regency building was formerly the The Royal Three Tuns Hotel visited in 1830 by Princess (later Queen) Victoria and her mother the Duchess of Kent. The building is stone-faced and of late Regency design, circa 1830 offset by the ornate ironwork of its balcony.

Broad Street is surrounded by fine Georgian houses with some Venetian and Palladian style windows, all built by John Hunter, a prosperous merchant, about 1810.

Numbers 7 and 9 Broad Street are both perfect examples of Georgian domestic architecture. The proportions of the windows are exactly as they should be and sit in the elevations where the brickwork dominates the window areas. Number 9 has well proportioned bay windows with a pediment at roof line emphasising the symmetry of the elevation.

Opposite is the Baptist Chapel, a Victorian building on the site of one of the earliest Baptist foundations in the country, thought to date from 1658. Inside its gallery fronts are panels reached by a graceful stairway curving up.

Two shops facing the entrance to Broad Street also have Regency balconies and are flanked by an imposing group of Georgian houses built about 1810. From there can be seen the Abbey Tower considered to be Pershore’s treasure.

Traverse north up the High Street and into Chapman Court from whence the banks of the Avon can be reached via the car park. Inspect the fine doorway of No.37 High Street which was formerly the home of the Wilson family who were tanners until 1835. The tannery works behind the house have been excavated and the plans are displayed at the Heritage Centre in the Town Hall just across the road.

Proceeding south down the High Street you can find an undercroft or crypt in No.21 which is now Arcade Bookshop, giving a possible indication of a medieval manor.

In The Courtyard, 19 High Street, can be seen one of the wool barns of the Ganderton family which has now been converted into a shop and workrooms. Wool stapling was an important trade in the town in the 19th century, and the family lived in a fine Georgian house on the front.
A few more steps will bring you to the elegant façade of the Angel Inn whose coachway leads down to the Avon.

The architectural delights of Bridge Street are best enjoyed by strolling down towards the bridges over the river at the approach to the town. Apart from the collective streetscape there are individual houses of importance and innumerable details of great interest.

No.1 Bridge Street was another Ganderton home adjacent to which is a large town house now occupied and well looked after by Barclays Bank. It has a plain dark brick frontage and a particularly fine front door with a late 18 th century fanlight of a most unusual design of interlocking circular ornaments.

Fanlight Perrott House

After passing Bedford House with its decorative balcony we come to Perrott House built about 1770 by Judge Perrott. Retiring to Pershore, he restored the weirs and locks of the Avon navigation, thus laying the foundation of the town’s prosperity in the late 18th century.

Beyond Perrott House you will come to the Star Inn and the Brandy Cask, two flourishing pubs. The Star was formerly a posting house, previously named the Coach and Horses.

Nos. 37-43 Bridge Street were originally the Maidenhead Inn and a landing place for the barge trade.

Further down and across the road is another distinguished residence, Stanhope House, built about 1790 by another George Perrott, the nephew of the judge.

At what was the Manor House Hotel (an early Victorian building now converted into apartments) the town finishes abruptly owing to the river meadows which are liable to flood.

On the other side of the road is Avon Court which is a development created from the old Saxon Mill which was destroyed by fire in the 1970s. The old mill house a Georgian building occupying a site mentioned in the Domesday Book fronts Bridge Street and was once used as a Quaker Meeting House. It is now part of the new development.

On to the old bridge which is medieval, though often repaired and altered in later times. Note the different stone which was used to repair the centre arch, a reminder of its attempted destruction in 1644 by King Charles 1’s army retreating to Worcester.

Returning towards the town, a Victorian toll house can be seen on the left (bearing a Civic Society plaque) and just behind it a path follows a serpentine brick wall, one of a number of examples in Pershore of this rather rate feature.