Visitors to the City of Worcester cannot fail to realise that the city’s most famous son, Edward Elgar, seems to have lived in a huge number of properties in and around the town. From the Elgar Brothers shop in the High Street to the house in College Precincts, plaques commemorating Elgar’s residence proliferate.
Much of the city that Elgar knew has disappeared, but look closely enough and you will still see many of the places with which he would be familiar. Chief among these stands the Cathedral as it has done for hundreds of years and many of the alleyways and streets still bare the names that they had in the nineteenth century. St. George’s Catholic Church, where he played the Organ, can be found in Sansome Place and when he received the freedom of the city it was at the Guildhall in the High Street where the celebrations took place.
The River Severn, then as now, flows through the City winding its way from the Welsh hills down to the Bristol Channel. It was a constant source of inspiration to both the young Elgar, who would take musical scores down to its banks to study and the mature composer who would go on to write the Severn Suite that illustrates musically the Commandery, the now lost Castle and the Cathedral.
Further afield, Elgar visited many places in the wider county and in neighbouring Herefordshire, often on “Mr Phoebus”, his Sunbeam bicycle. In Hereford he can be seen looking up at the Cathedral leaning against the machine. In 1904 Hereford became his home when he and Alice, his wife, moved into Plas Gwyn. Here he was able to indulge his scientific hobby, often to the alarm of his family and neighbours.
In later life Elgar lived in London and during the Great War, Sussex as well as Stratford-upon-Avon. However, he always returned to Worcester and its surrounding countryside. His last home was at Marl Bank, Rainbow Hill, to the east of the city, where he died on 23 February 1934.
