WHEN a large wall collapsed in Worcester’s Rainbow Hill district (again!) recently it was sadly reminiscent of another piece of real estate falling down a few hundred yards up the road nearly 55 years ago.

Except on that occasion the tumbling of old bricks was no accident and rather more ignorant.

Indeed, in the view of many conservationists, it ranked as one of the local authority’s worst planning blunders.

Right up there with flattening the Public Hall and destroying England’s last remaining cathedral lychgate.

For in 1969 the wrecking balls smashed into the walls of the last home of Sir Edward Elgar who in virtually every other aspect of his life achieved almost saintly standing in the city.

The fact the attractive property known as Marl Bank near the top of Rainbow Hill was replaced by an angular 60s apartment block was bad enough but that wasn’t really the half of it.

Because the site also had an important connection with the English Civil War.

At the bottom of Rainbow Hill, at the junction with Tolladine Road, there was once a turnpike gate which until the 1860s marked the boundary between town and country.

All beyond was green pasture and orchards and Rainbow Hill was a rural and picturesque place with a number of pretty villas halfway up.

The house at the top, originally a farmhouse, had several names over the years.

It was The Mount and Round Mount before Elgar, by then a widower, bought it as Marl Bank at the end of 1929.

It was his 21st home and he was to die there in 1934, aged 76.

Although the property was large for an elderly person, its appeal lay in having good views across the city to the cathedral, something Elgar would have appreciated in his twilight.

When they took the sledgehammers to Marl Bank in 1969, the city had neither a proper museum charting Elgar’s life and times (that didn’t happen until 2000 when the facilities at his birthplace cottage at Lower Broadheath were expanded) nor a comprehensive Civil War centre because the one at the Commandery didn’t open until 1977.

As historians have mentioned several times since, retention and conversion of Marl Bank would have solved one if not both of these demands.

But what’s done is done although it’s hard to gaze at the architecture of Elgar Court, which rose from the rubble, and dream of Gerontius or swashbuckling Cavaliers.

Because Rainbow Hill had local significance long before that aberration, for it was there the Great Siege of 1646 ended when Worcester’s Royalist garrison, which had been supporting King Charles I, surrendered to Parliament.

Thus becoming “the first of the cities that declared for the Crown and the last which held in defence thereof”.

By the way, don’t confuse this with the Battle of Worcester involving Charles II which happened five years later.

Worcester was besieged twice in the Civil War in 1643 and 1646.

The latter lasted from March 26 until July 23 and only ended when news came that King Charles I had surrendered to the Scots at Newark in preference to being captured by the Parliamentary army.

At that the governor led the brave garrison in a march out of the city walls with flags flying to Round Mount on Rainbow Hill where all were offered a free pass after pledging not to bear arms against Parliament again.

The gentlemen among them were also allowed to keep their swords which explains why so few Worcestershire gentlemen took part in the 1651 Battle of Worcester.

They were not prepared to dishonour the promise they had made at the top of Rainbow Hill five years earlier and this soon proved a smart move.

Smarter, anyway, than knocking down a historic house.