Worcester

Cathedral city on the river Severn, and county town of Worcestershire. A modest Roman town, it was reoccupied by a cathedral (680) and later by a fortified town (burh) c.890. From the 14th to the 17th cents. it flourished as a river port and cloth-making city. Its peak national ranking came in the 17th cent. (twelfth largest English town in 1662), but it suffered severely for supporting the royalists in the civil wars.