Stourport, Worcestershire

Place of resort

The elegant piece of carpentry on top of the dovecote at Rousham set me thinking about other buildings I’d seen embellished with a bit of the woodworker’s art. As it happened, I was reading a book on urban history and chanced upon a paragraph about Stourport-on-Severn. I was reminded that Stourport is best known as a canal town, begun in the late-18th century as the terminus of the Staffordshire and Worcestershire Canal.

When the canal got going, various utilitarian buildings – warehouses, barge sheds, workshops, and the like – were built by the canal basin and a steady traffic of boats built up. This excited quite a bit of interest, with people coming to the town just to look at the boats. The town began to become a ‘resort of people of fashion’ and a hotel was built. In addition, there seem to have been attempts to beautify the place, to make it more attractive to visitors. This warehouse, originally quite plain, was adorned with its white-painted turret, with weather vane. The clock was donated by the people of Stourport in the year 1812.

The clock turret is visually attractive and a public amenity for passers-by. It’s also a reminder that there’s a danger in thinking of places in one way. Stourport was not only a canal town, even if the canal was its raison d’être. Towns, almost by definition, are home to varied activities and the ‘resort’ of visitors who come for all kinds of reasons. It’s interesting that a clock turret that’s easy to take for granted is a sign of that varied history.

Stourport-on-Severn, Worcestershire

Investment product (1)

To Stourport-on-Severn, to admire the locks, basins, bridges, and waterside buildings of one of England’s most fascinating canal towns. But as usual, my eye was caught by something I didn’t quite expect. This building is called The Tontine. The central part was an inn, and the flanking portions contain houses. There are more houses in the wings, which extend out from the back of the building to give the whole thing a plan like an enormous capital E. It was built in the 1770s, although the porch was added about 100 years later. The whole building is being redeveloped as houses, and is festooned with ‘For Sale’ signs. Its red brick and neat windows look well, and the rooms at the front enjoy views across the lawn to the River Severn.

But why was it called ‘The Tontine’? A tontine was what today might be called, to use a kind of language I usually avoid, an ‘investment product’. As I understand it, it worked like this. A group of shareholders clubbed together to buy an investment, such as a property, and shared the income. But there was a twist: the shareholders couldn’t sell their shares, and when they died, their shares passed to the other shareholders. The last surviving shareholder struck gold, inheriting the entire scheme. One presumes that the newly developed houses in the building are being sold with a more conventional tenure arrangement.