Swan With Two Nicks

WORCESTER

SO8554NW NEW STREET 620-1/17/457 (East side) 08/03/74 No.28 Swan With Two Nicks Formerly Listed as: NEW STREET (East side) No.28 Dirty Duck)

GV II

House, now inn. Origins of late C16 with early/mid C18 facade and later additions and alteration. Timber frame; painted brick facade with ashlar copings and sills, concealed roof; cast-iron rainwaterhead and fallpipe. EXTERIOR: 3 storeys, 4 first-floor windows. Ground and first floors have 8/8 flush sashes, those to first floor with flat arches of rubbed brick; second floor has 4/8 flush sashes and flat arches of rubbed brick, all with sills. To first and second floors the third opening is blind. Coped parapet. Off-centre right entrance, a 6-reeded-flush-panel door in renewed surround with pediment on brackets. Further opening at right a part-glazed door. Rainwaterhead and fallpipe. INTERIOR: ground floor altered but retains exposed chamfered beams and purlins, passageway at left has rectangular framing. First-floor has chamfered beams with ogee stops, exposed rafters; exposed timber-framing, some renewed. HISTORICAL NOTE: thought to be the oldest site of a building in New Street dating from C13, this building thought to date from c1550. In 1581 it was leased for 21 years to Edward Elcox, weaver from the Church of St Martin at an annual rent of 26s 8d; by 1764 it was a tavern leased by Charles Lea. In 1771 it was in two tenancies, one part known as The Swan, tenanted by James Crump; in 1780 it was known as The Little Swan and by 1830 it had become The Swan With Two Nicks, tenanted by George Burrows; during the 1890s it was known as The Swan With Two Necks. Ma Watkins was the last landlady to brew beer here c1940s. New Street had changed its name from the medieval Glover Street by 1523. Hughes: 'New street, in its C16 and C17 phase, was a street of dwelling-houses with workshops behind ... of these The Old Pheasant (qv) and Nash House (qv) are the most complete, while No.10 (qv) and The Swan with Two Necks contain vestiges of an earlier structure.' Nos 25-30 (consecutive) (qv) form a good group with the listed buildings in Cornmarket (qv). Information supplied by Linda Griffin, landlady of The Swan With Two Nicks. (Hughes P: Buildings and the Building Trade in Worcester 1540-1650: PhD thesis: 1990-: 200).