At the last speaker meeting of President Janet Ince’s year on the theme ‘History is Around Us’, members were taken back to the 18th Century and the beginnings of Kidderminster by Robert Barber, a well-known author on the townscape. Focussing on the Bull Ring, Robert illustrated his talk with pictures of the many people and streets from its inception in the 1750s. He described the events that created the founding of Baxter Church, the myriad of traders including Blunts Shoes (the longest surviving business established in 1866), Holders drapery stores, the General Post Office, Craddocks and other familiar local names. The early photographs showed clearly that there was a very close community around the area upon which Richard Baxter would watch over before his statute was moved to its present site outside St. Mary’s Church.

The redevelopment of the area in the 1960s for the new Post Office and the building of the multi-storey car parks meant a large number of those buildings, which had survived the floods of 1886 and in the 1950s, were demolished, changing the face of the Bull Ring to what we see today.

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