Distance: 4 miles
Difficulty of the terrain: medium
Get the Route: via Ordnance Survey or download the GPX. file from Dropbox
Walk from the heart of Worcester across the River Severn and through fields beside the River Teme where 1651’s Battle of Worcester was fought to the village of Powick and its historic old bridge.
The Story
The Walk
Getting Back
Powick Bridge: “Site of the First and the Last Shots in the English Civil War”?
Powick Old Bridge lying on the River Teme between Worcester’s south western suburbs and the little village of Powick on the road west to Malvern dates back to at least the middle of the Fifteenth Century. However, its legendary place in British history stems from the claim, probably half true, that it was where the “first and the last” shots of the Britain’s Seventeenth Century Civil Wars “were fired”.
On 23rd September 1642, in the period immediately prior to the war’s first major battle at Edgehill in Warwickshire near the north easternmost part of the Cotswolds, a skirmish was fought between Parliamentarian and Royalist cavalry over control of Powick Old Bridge. The Royalist soldiers, too by the soon to be famous, including for the burning of Birmingham, royal commander Prince Rupert, won that bout. Parliament’s soldiers being forced to flee fifteen miles from Worcester, allowing Royal soldiers holed up in Worcester time to retreat south east towards Oxford. Early confirmation that in the first stages of the war the armies aligned with Charles I tended to perform better in combat.
The second battle which saw Powick Old Bridge become a key strategic location was the English phase of the Civil War’s final battle, the Battle of Worcester. This was the final major instance of combat in the coda to the British Civil Wars in the autumn of 1651 when Charles Stuart the future Charles II tried to take back the crown by force.
Attempting to build his military might by drawing on the strong pro-royal communities of the Welsh Marches and Severn Valley, Charles Stuart swerved Parliamentary forces at Chester and marched his forces down England’s westernmost flank, before attempting to cross the River Severn to head east for Oxford, his defeated father’s wartime capital.
Parliamentary soldiers captured or destroyed the bridges across the Severn at Bewdley and Upton-upon-Severn leaving Charles with Worcester as his only option to cross the major waterway. The fact Worcester was generally politically sympathetic to his cause also meant that it was an attractive place for Charles’ armies to halt.
Having expected to fight the army of the former king’s son somewhere in northern Warwickshire around Coventry, several Parliamentary armies, including one led by Oliver Cromwell, instead converged on Worcester, attacking the city on 3rd September 1651. This included an audacious attack across the Severn by means of a pontoon bridge.
Primarily however, Parliament looked to attack from the south across the shallower, narrower River Teme rather than the Severn, the Parliamentary army met with stiffer than expected resistance around Powick, which then and now, was the site of the main bridge across the Teme near Worcester.
With many of their soldiers pinned down by the Royalist soldiers hidden in the hedgerows crisscrossing the flatlands where the Teme and Severn meet, and facing a Royalist cavalry charge, Parliamentary commanders swifty hurried more soldiers across the Severn and managed to turn the tide of the battle.
Their superior numbers of better trained, better equipped, more experienced, and in many cases ideologically hardened soon forced the Royalist Army back into the city, which was stormed overnight. Charles Stuart fled, heading for Shropshire, the Boscobel Oak Tree, and the crazed dash across the western Midlands and southern England that inspired the Monarch’s Way.
After the battle, while the post-civil war Commonwealth proved short lived, it was never again seriously internally challenged, prior to the decision in 1660 to instate Charles II as a somewhat more constitutional monarch than his father had tried to be. While several hundred Parliamentary soldiers lost their lives at Worcester in 1651, it is reckoned that around 3,000 died on the Royalist side. The Earl of Derby, a prominent noble backer of Charles Stuart was executed after the failed uprising. Many of the English and Welsh survivors from the Royal Army were pressed into the New Model Army and sent to serve in Ireland. While more than eight thousand of Scottish, many from the Highlands, were either transported to the Caribbean as indentured labourers or sent to East Anglia in similar unfree conditions to work on Fenland drainage projects.
Since 1651 Powick Bridge has had a quiet existence. The area around Powick, bound as it is by two major rivers and prone to flooding due to its low lying nature, remains an important corridor for traversing the Severn valley. Powick Bridge is long closed to cars replaced by a far more modern structure crossing the Teme carrying cars along the A449 to and from Worcester.
However, heavy winter flows down the Teme, local government funding cuts, and the age of the bridge’s partly medieval fabric mean that it is in increasing danger. Early in 2024 a section of the structure collapsed following flooding around the structure meaning that it had to be closed. Work to reopen has progressed slowly meaning that at the time of writing in August 2024 the bridge remained shut to all users.
The Walk
Get the route: via Ordnance Survey Maps or download the GPX. file from Dropbox
I create the Walk Midlands routes via Ordnance Survey Maps Explorer enabling me to take them on my phone. Subscribe yourself via the banner above.
The walk from Worcester to Powick, across the deeply historic Powick Old Bridge, deeply imbued with British Civil Wars history, and connected to both Prince Rupert and 1651’s Battle of Worcester, begins from Worcester Foregate Street Railway Station.
Upon exiting Foregate Street Railway Station turn left walking along High Street deeper into Worcester city centre.
Cross over two roads which join with High Street.
Presently coming level with Broad Street running off High Street to the right, cross over the road and head to the right along Broad Street.
Continue down Broad Street which is pedestrianised past the Crowngate Shopping Centre.
Upon reaching the busy western part of Broad Street, cross over the road, then turn right.
At the corner turn left heading for Worcester Bridge which carries the A44 across the River Severn.
Walk straight across Worcester Bridge with its famous view of Worcester’s relatively small, but very picturesque and strikingly situated, medieval cathedral.
On the far side of Worcester bridge turn left. Here there is a gate onto a riverside walkway which you pass through.
Keep on walking straight along the tarmac path, known as Bromwich Parade beside the Severn on the far side of the gate.
Carry on for quite some distance passing Diglis Canal Basin where the Worcester and Birmingham Canal joins the Severn and recently installed Diglis Island Fish Bypass.
Presently after quite some way you reach the white suspension bridge which carries pedestrians and cyclists over the Severn.
To the left here there are some oxidised metal sculptures of figures from Worcester’s history, including the Civil Wars, while straight ahead a footpath, now unpaved runs past the bridge along the bank of the River Severn.
Continue along the path straight past the bridge.
Soon you reach a metal gate which you pass through.
On the far side carry on straight ahead following the path beside the Severn through a field. To your right as you walk there are great views of the Malvern Hills.
Carry on straight along the path, which is always pretty clear, straight along the banks of the Severn for some distance.
After some distance you pass through another metal gate and continue along the path on the far side.
Presently at the point where the Teme converges with the Severn, next to a sign board explaining about the Parliamentary pontoon bridge during the Battle of Worcester, the path turns sharply to the right, running parallel with the Teme along the edge of a field.
Continue along this path for quite some distance.
Soon you pass through a metal gate and continue walking around the edge of the fields a little further.
Presently the path, which has bypassed a sharp bend in the River Teme, curves sharply to the right.
Past this bend carry on straight ahead around the edge of the fields.
You cross several narrow fields passing through another series of gates. One very homemade looking.
Soon you reach another gate leading into a field where you take a sight left to pick up the path.
Here you reach a further metal gate leading to a path across a narrow meadow, which you follow walking straight ahead to the far side.
At the top of this meadow the path leads through a gate out into a large meadow.
Through the gate the chimney of the old Powick Power Station, now flats, and the arch of the new bridge are clearly visible.
Walk straight ahead across the meadow.
On the far side of the meadow, to the left there is a gate leading through onto a path leading down beneath an arch of the new bridge.
Carry on across a small meadow on the far side of the bridge now nearing the old power station.
Through a gate on the far side of the meadow turn left to reach Powick Old Bridge. Potentially the site of the “first and last shots of the British Civil Wars”.
Usually you could just walk across it to reach the Powick side of the River Teme. However, the closure when I walked the route led me to walk up the lane from the pumping station, turn right on the A449 and walk along the main road to cross the new Powick Bridge.
Just after crossing either bridge across the Teme you reach the impressive new cycleway bridge over the busy A449 and A4440 junction.
Once Powick Old Bridge is restored it will be straight ahead along the path leading away from the western bank of the River Teme. From the top you can clearly see Powick village just in front of you.
Head up and over this bridge.
The bridge and its access ramp brings you down onto the pavement leading into Powick along the side of the A449.
Upon reaching the road turn right and begin walking towards the village. On the far side of the road there is a curry house named “Cromwell’s” after the victor of the Battle of Worcester in 1651.
Continue along the road until you reach the heart of Powick village.
Here by the bus stop back to Worcester is where the walk ends.
Getting Back
At the time of writing in August 2024 Powick was well served by buses from the main road through the village throughout the day until around half six at night when they stopped. The service from Malvern to Worcester and vice versa was half hourly for much of the day. There were also a few services each day between Upton-upon-Severn and Worcester. This means that it is straightforward to return to Worcester city centre and to get to Malvern. Both of which have railway stations and onward bus connections.