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Plotting the Past, Planning
the Future - The Life of a Plot
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1000 Years in the Life of a PlotMarmion House 91-94 the High Street The Earl's Post This is the story of a property, a plot, in the centre of Worcester. Like hundreds of its neighbours it has been lived on, and traded from, down the centuries; buildings have come and gone as have owners and occupants, but as a piece of real estate it has remained recognisable, passed down in an unbroken, continuing chain since the Saxon period. |
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| Marmion House, April 2000. | ||||
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Before records began... The plot in question lies on the corner
of the High Street and Copenhagen Street, close to the Guildhall.
No documents survive that tell us about its beginnings, but archaeology,
and the history of Worcester and its landscape suggest that it probably
came into being, and was first built up, at some time in the 10th
century A.D., just before the start of the last Millennium. The High
Street itself was almost certainly the main street, and market place,
of Anglo-Saxon Worcester. The area around our plot shows signs of
regularity in its layout that suggest that Copenhagen Street was the
axis of a little grid-pattern of planned streets laid out at regular
intervals along the High Street. The 'town planner' here was almost
certainly one of the Saxon bishops of Worcester, possibly Bishop (Saint)
Oswald himself, possibly in the 960s.After this, nothing whatever
is known of the development and ownership of the plot until long after
the Norman Conquest. |
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The house erected on the corner lay back from the street in a small courtyard behind a row of shops. There was a gate leading into the courtyard from Huxter (Copenhagen) Street and a garden behind the house. The house was built of stone, with a stone vaulted semi-basement or undercroft, and a hall above. The shops in front also had stone undercrofts, where goods could be kept secure. The remains of these undercrofts survive under the modern building. |
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| 91-94
High Street, Location Plan. |
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