The Old Vinegar Works

The Old Vinegar Works is a warehouse built around 1870, with later additions and alterations. It is constructed from pinkish-red brick with gault brick dressings, featuring an ashlar cornice and capitals, topped with a slate and glass roof. The building has a rectangular plan and consists of a single tall storey, with 13 by 11 window bays. Gault brick pilasters with ashlar caps rise from a first-stage band, leading to a stepped frieze and modillion cornice, and a low coped parapet. The end bays have blind openings, while the rest of the façade features 20-pane segmental-arched windows in metal frames, adorned with voussoir arches made of alternating red and gault brick. The lower stage is obscured on the long side by temporary structures. The returns display pedimented gables with similar design elements, including red brick pilasters on the lower stage, similar windows, and central plank doors, as well as five-stepped-light, round-arched windows with gault brick surrounds in the tympanum. The apex of the roof is glazed.

Inside, the roof features two levels of metal collars and x-braces. Historically, this building was part of the Hill Evans Vinegar Works, which operated from 1830 to around 1960. It would have housed large wooden vats for vinegar storage. According to the Worcester Daily Times in 1903, the filling and dispatching room is described as an enormous hall, one of the largest single rooms in the kingdom, containing great vats, with one vat measuring 100 feet in circumference and 32 feet high, holding a capacity of 114,821 gallons.