Raven Hotel And Clarendon Hotel Annex

A Memory of Droitwich Spa.

I like to say I was born in the Raven though it wasn't strictly true as I was born in a nursing home at Stourport. But my mum was the housekeeper there and my dad was handyman, and we lived in a flat in the Clarendon which was the Annexe at the bottom/High St end of the Raven. In those days there were lots of elderly people who lived there, some of them retired service people or elderly spinsters. And football teams used to come to take the waters at the Brine baths. Mum and Dad became very friendly with Matt Busby and the Man U team who were regular visitors. We had a lovely private garden behind our flat, and beyond that the kitchen gardens and greenhouses where they grew everything for the hotel. Mr and Mrs Platts who owned the hotel lived in a flat next to us, or maybe above? With their daughter Jackie who was a bit younger than me. So it was a fine place to spend my first five years. I would toddle round after my mum on her duties and ride up and down in the big old fashioned lift. Even after we moved out to a house, mum carried working there for years, and I had holiday jobs there in my teens. We thought it was the finest place in town, and I was sad to see recently that the whole site is being sold for development. I hope it's listed and can't be knocked down.
My best friend lived opposite in a flat above a gift shop called the Spinning Wheel. On Saturday mornings we would go together to the children's pictures at Salters Hall cinema. We were only five, but nobody thought it unsafe. There were hardly any cars!