Some History

A hundred years of history and service

... and it cost just £1,575 to build

ST MARK'S in the Cherry Orchard, the delightfully named church in a southern suburb of Worcester, celebrated the centenary of its birth in the summer of 2002.

Its foundation stone was officially laid on June 21, 1902, by Lady Mary Lygon of Madresfield Court, Malvern. She had been Mayoress of Worcester in 1896, supporting her brother, the 7th Earl Beauchamp who was that year's Mayor.

Lady Mary also accompanied her brother when he went to Australia to be Governor of New South Wales, from 1899 to 1902, and had clearly not long returned from Down Under when she undertook the St Mark's stone-laying ceremony.

Lady Mary Lygon is immortalized musically as the subject of the 13th of Elgar's Enigma Variations.

The report of the St Mark's stone-laying can be traced in the bound archives of Berrow's Worcester Journal for 1902, which says the weather was "beautifully fine, and a large number of parishioners and friends were present".

"The Rev G.A.K Simpson, Vicar of St Peter's, said Lady Mary Lygon had always held a high place in their regard since the time she was Mayoress." (The Rev Mr Simpson was very much a moving spirit in the founding of St Mark's and later with St Martin's in London Road.)

Copies of Berrow's Journal and other Worcester newspapers were laid for posterity in a cavity below the foundation stone.

St Mark's began life as only "a mission church" - an offshoot or outpost of the large-scale Parish of St Peter's.

The Cherry Orchard area, from being a pastoral expanse of meadows and trees, had seen much housing development in the last quarter of the 19th Century with the construction of Orchard Street, Waverley Street, Cavendish Street and Berwick Street. A school for "108 scholars" had also been built, and the area was served by a pub, the Berwick Arms, which opened in 1869.

A Commission of Enquiry into the parishes of Worcester City, convened in 1899 by Bishop Perowne and with Samuel Southall as one of the members, came to the firm conclusion that the enormous parish of St Peter's had to be split up. Recommendations were made for a new church in London Road, a chapel at Whittington, and for a mission church at Cherry Orchard.

St Mark's was the first of these projects to move under way and was completed a few months after the foundation stone-laying. The site was given by country landowner Anthony Lechmere, and more than 200 donors gave cash gifts large and small, the leading contributors being Mr H.H Harrington, a former St Peter's churchwarden (£200) and the Rev R. Mence (£400). A lot of local people also contributed through a Penny-a-Brick fund.

St Mark's was built to seat 252 parishioners in its 55ft long and 28ft wide nave, and below the church was provided a large area to serve as a Sunday schoolroom and as a hall for a wide range of parish activities. The altar was the original Elizabethan altar from the old St Peter's, close to the Cathedral.

Architects for the new church were Yeates and Jones, the builders Bromage and Evans, and W. and F. Webb supplied the furniture - all Worcester concerns.

In its early years, St Mark's Church took centre-stage in a neighbourhood of Victorian housing which had a bakery, post office, general store and the Berwick Arms with its brewhouse. The area was on a city tram route too, but cows still grazed on a wide expanse of meadow land, also in the shadow of the new church. A coppice of beech, fir and oak trees lined a route to the nearby Duck Brook.

In those days, St Mark's was described as standing in "almost a little country village on the southern boundary of the city". However, the church soon had "a very lively and influential congregation", and further cash gifts came pouring in to cover the £1,575 cost of building St Mark's.

It seems, however, that much was demanded of the church caretaker in those times. A list of his duties in 1908 still survives and stipulates:

• The church and vestry are to be swept, and the seats, furniture, and so on, dusted the morning following services. Stonework and tiles are to be wiped over at least once a fortnight. Floors are to be scrubbed, windows cleaned inside and out, and curtains shaken in the open air at least twice in the year.
• The church is to be opened and the bell rung 15 minutes before services. Gas lighting is to be lit when required. The vestry fire is also to be lit when required, and sufficient coal is to be supplied for the day's use. The grate is to be cleaned and the fire re-laid the morning after use.
• The church door is to be unlocked every morning by 9 and locked again at 6pm. The Club Room is to be swept and dusted daily. The boiler is to be kept clean and free of clinkers. Heating apparatus is to give a temperature in the church and Club Room of not less than 55 and not more than 60 degrees.
• The kitchen is to be swept and cleaned as required. Damp sawdust must be used in sweeping to prevent dust rising. All dust and rubbish is to be removed weekly. The yard, porch and pavement are to be kept clean, and special attention paid to gutters and drains. The WCs are to receive daily attention, clean towels to be supplied as required.

And, judging from the last item on the caretaker's demanding duty list, graffiti was even a problem back in Edwardian times - "Boundary walls are to be kept free from chalk marks and pencil and other marks".

An expensive organ was installed in St Mark's in 1909, but proved a bit of a headache. For nearly 30 years, its pump was powered by water from the adjacent Duck Brook, but erratic water-pressure meant that the organ would often die out in the middle of a note!

It wasn't until 1938 that negotiations with Worcester Corporation led to the organ being connected to a new high-pressure water main laid out to Norton Barracks!

However, the renowned Worcester organ-makers Nicholsons supplied and fitted an electric blower in 1946, and a major overhaul of the organ was undertaken in the mid-1960s.

Electric lighting was not installed in the church until the 1930s, and it was not until 1947 that the last gas lighting brackets were removed.

For more than three decades, St Mark's remained a mission church under the wing of St Peter's. But a major milestone came in 1936, when it was designated "a conventional district", making it a completely independent church with its own incumbent and own parochial church council.

The natural progression from this came in 1955 with the official creation of the Parish of St Mark's in the Cherry Orchard at a consecration ceremony conducted by the then Bishop of Worcester, Dr W. Wilson Cash.

The clergy at St Mark's since 1936 have been: Curates-in-Charge - the Rev T. Bennington Hayes (1936-45), the Rev Dewi Price (1945-49) and the Rev A. Dawson Catterall (1950-55); and Vicars - the Rev Christopher Pilkington of the famous international glass manufacturing family (1955-60), the Rev James Oldroyd (1961-75), the Rev William Barton (1976-80), the Rev Greville Cross (1980-85), the Rev Colin Fowler (1985-92), the Rev Alan Hawker (1992-99) and the Rev Janice Fox (2001), the present incumbent.

A small hole in the concrete near the front steps of St Mark's still bears testimony today to a significant incident of 1958. The bell, which crowns the façade of the church, came crashing down but, luckily, no one was underneath at the time - even though a wedding was taking place in the church.

Many boys down the years have been members of St Mark's Church Choir, enjoying the annual outings and perhaps a bit of apple-scrumping on the way to practice. In times past, a carol service was held every Christmas afternoon with the proceeds always being divided among the choirboys. Though it's an event perhaps best forgotten, the choirboys once went on strike in protest at not being taken on their customary annual treat.

For many years, Sunday school classes and annual outings for youngsters were a firm feature of the life of St Mark's, as were the Men's Club and the Ladies Social Committee. The men had a billiard table in the hall for about 60 years from the time it was originally installed during the First World War.

Down the decades, the lower level church hall, with its kitchen and cloakrooms and the later addition of a stage, has served as a vibrant parish and community centre for a wide range of activities and as home to organisations such as the Mothers Union, Women's Guild, Guides and Brownies, youth groups, Darby and Joan clubs, the Over 60s, drama groups, Young Wives, mother and toddler groups and, in the early days, the Church of England Temperance Society!

St Mark's has seen many improvements and extensions since 1902 but, above all, it can look back on a significant century during which it has served a key role as a worthy place of worship for generations of local people - a welcoming and friendly family church, still with a good-sized congregation today.

Background information for this article was drawn from an excellent short history of St Mark's, written by Miss Dorothy Seddon about 20 years ago.