The Tall Tale of the Worcester Sauce Factory - Lost Buildings 2

Old factory viewed from roof of new shopping

building, Worcester 1991

In 1991 I photographed a red brick, industrial building in the centre of Worcester. It was an obsolete and unwanted Victorian factory which, although it added character and historical context to the area, was about to be demolished to make way for the new Crowngate Shopping Centre.  Victorian industrial buildings would not become really fashionable for renovation or conversion into desirable ‘loft’ homes for a few more years.

Practical obsolescence, changing fashion and new commercial necessity have always been the enemies of previously built structures, often leading to their destruction. This will inevitably continue to be true, like the case of this Worcester factory. The alternative would be to mothball old buildings once they become obsolete, just in case, and only build on unoccupied land.

The obvious impracticality of this approach makes it inevitable that particularly in Britain, with our shortage of building land, we will demolish structures which some people actually like, in order to create new ones. In fact within weeks of their demolition most buildings aren't missed by anyone. A few obsolete buildings can be rescued by enthusiastic individuals with access to money or by TV shows like the BBC’s ‘Restoring England’s Heritage,’ but many more are lost and most of those are almost immediately forgotten.  Some don't matter, others may have fascinating stories attached.

Timber trusses stacked for re-use elsewhere.

In Worcester the shopping centre was already under construction and I was there to document progress in the creation of that new retail hub for the citizens of Worcester, but as I stood the new centre's roof, I took a photograph of the doomed factory. I then went down to ground level and was able to get inside. I managed to take a few shots of the building as the salvage firm moved in. The place was not just bulldozed, bits and pieces were saved for re-use including many of the beautiful red bricks, the chimney pots, lintels, stonework and timber trusses.     
      

Rear entrance originally for horse and cart

At the time, the story told was that this factory was the original building where in the 1830’s two chemists, Messrs John Wheeler Lea and William Perrin, accidentally created their world famous Worcestershire Sauce. It was concocted as an interpretation of a recipe imported from India by Lord Marcus Sandys, who had been serving as an officer in the East India Company - or according to another version of the tale he was Governor of Bengal. He commissioned Lea and Perrins to re-create his favourite Bengal fish sauce. However there seems to be little or no evidence that any Lord Marcus Sandys ever set foot in India.

Yet a third version of the tale credits Lady Sandys with asking the chemists to make a curry sauce from a recipe provided by her friend Mrs Grey, whose uncle was Chief Justice of India. The plot thickens and so did the recipe. Apparently the first batch tasted terrible, Lea and Perrins commented that it was 'unpalatable, red hot fire water.' They had made several barrels of this foul brew, which were hidden in the cellar and forgotten. Several years later the barrels were re-discovered during a stock take and the contents had fermented to become the famous, flavoursome sauce. It was first marketed in 1837 and gained rapid popularity as a table condiment including on passenger ships via which it spread to the USA.

Lea and Perrins factory on Midland Road

Later research tells me that Worcester Sauce was created not in a factory but in a chemist's shop on Worcester's Broad Street.  The sauce has been manufactured since the 1890's in a building on Midland Road, Worcester, which is about a mile from the town centre and more convenient for distribution as it's near the railway. So some time between the Broad Street Pharmacy and the Midland Road Factory, could there have been another production site? After all, it seems a tall order to produce a popular bottled sauce in sufficient quantities to supply an international market in a small shop on a city street.

The mythology/history around the origins of Lea & Perrins Worcestershire Sauce make for a great story, but if the sauce was really made in the shop for much of the nineteenth century, then what was that old factory building which I was able to photograph just before it vanished? I found no other clues and if that red brick building, with its distinctive chimney and gables wasn’t the sauce factory, it is well and truly lost and forgotten.