A Tribute To Alfred Watkins; Part Four..

The 17th Century St Giles chapel as it now stands on St.Owen Street.

The corner of Ledbury Road and St.Owen Street where St.Giles Chapel used to stand, it used to protrude well out into the junction. As recorded by Alfred Watkins and his camera and the Hereford Times in 1927 the chapel was relocated to it's present position in St.Owen Street in the picture above this one.

This plaque reads "The stones below are part of the walls of the twelfth century round chapel of Saint Giles. Found in 1927 when demolishing the chapel of 1682"

During excavation in 1927 the foundations of a round church were discovered, it was hoped they could be preserved. This was not possible, but Watkins managed to persuade the city surveyor to design the new boundary wall of the gardens, to sit on an arc of the old foundation some thirteen feet in length. The plaque is under this wooden bench.

Detail from the alms houses.

Alfred Watkins was the chairman of the executive committee responsible for the erection of the county and city War Memorial which selected this Eleanor Cross. In the 1934 guide book for the Old House he wrote of the pigeons which "were turned out of the Old House in 1872, but found shelter in the belfry of St Peter's Church....Once a year the birds gather for a memorable occasion. The appointed hour of the morning of Armistice Day is near, the people are drifting towards the war memorial cross in St. Peter's Square. The sound of prayer and hymn is heard; it is an unusual item in bird-life; and these town pigeons are assembled in ranks of expectation on the tower parapet. There is a hush around the cross, broken by the deep signal boom of the maroon, when the birds rise with startled unison in one swoop of curved formation and loud clapping of wings. In the two minutes' silence they quietly come back for the second signal, and with the dispersing crowd they too depart, not again to gather at this vantage point untill, in a year's time, there comes once more the eleventh day of the eleventh month."

The Grapes on the corner of East Street was part of the Watkins-Imperial Brewery.

The only sign of the Watkins legacy to be seen in Hereford today.

A fisherman in-front of the Hereford Rowing Club established in 1861 which Watkins joined in 1878, and became vice-president in 1901.

Also part of the Watkins-Imperial Brewery.

This was the Maidenhead Inn in Eign Street, part of the Watkins Chain.

This wa the site of the Three Crowns again on Eign Street, also part of the Watkins brewery.

Once the site of Lloyds bank, the restoration of this building was organised by the Old House Committee of which Watkins was one of it's leading member's. It was he who wrote the first guide to the building which contained ten of his own photographs, published in June 1934.

Alfred Watkins Tribute; Part Three...Imperial brewery and flour mill.

Long since demolished this is where The "Watkins" Imperial Flour Mill stood on Friars Street in Hereford. Another of Alfred Watkins' enterprises, The Watkins Meter Company was in a small shed like building attached to the flour mills, this is where the famous "Watkins Bee Meter" was manufactured along with other photographic meters, also they made equipment used in the baking of bread like the "Baker's Thermometer".

Although the mill is no longer there. The new bungalows have this plaque on the wall as a nod back to earlier times.

Bewell Street as it now stands as the site of Tesco supermarket.

An Alfred Watkins photograph of Bewell Street in the late 19th century when it was still the Imperial brewery. Image ©Herefordshire Heritage Services.

Alfred Watkins father Charles Watkins purchased Bewell House in 1870 when Alfred was 15. This was the family town house as Charles Watkins went on to buy Wisteston Court in Marden as the main family house. Apart from the Imperial Inn this is all that now stands of the Imperial Brewery.

This would have been the cask yard at the rear of the Imperial brewery according to an old engraving circa 1892.

This is the Widemarsh Street Gatehouse built in the late 15th or 16th Century. In 1865 it was opened as a boys school. Alfred would have been one of it's first pupils. He later told his son "it was a shocking bad school where the teaching was perfectly dreadful and I learned absolutely nothing".

You can check out previous installments by clicking the links below;

http://www.jimwoodphotojournalist.net/2012/12/a-photographic-tribute-to-alfred.html

http://www.jimwoodphotojournalist.net/2013/01/alfred-watkins-tribute-part-two-in.html