A Bill you can’t ignore

Here’s a quick one via David Evans from that highly respected great grandfather of local photographic and oral history Bill Mayo – Bill and his wife, Clarice have been behind some of the greatest and most appreciated local history photo books about our area, including Memories of Old Brownhills, Memories of Old Walsall Wood and Memories of Brownhills Past.

Bill’s contribution to local history has been immense over the years, and I’m very grateful to both he and David for supplying material to use here. Much appreciated, chaps, thank you.

You may remember we helped Bill last year with an image that led to the recovery and rededication of a remarkable piece of local history.

Anyway, on with the images at hand.

David wrote:

HI Bob

The above image has been kindly donated by local historian and noted author Bill Mayo, with a request.

It would seem that the photo was taken outside Mount Pleasant Primitive Methodist Church, Watling Street, Brownhills, but we are not able to decipher the wording on the chapel notice boards

Please can your good readers also help to date the photo… some sort of whitewashing ‘bee’, seems to be a similar event to the one that took place in Clayhanger during the general strike

Could we possibly identify some of the decorators?

I am also delighted to be able to offer the below image the Bill has kindly shared of the legendary steamboat on Norton Pool, courtesy of local historian and author Mr. Bill Mayo.

I believe the boat is shown moored in ‘The Channel’ which was on the south side of the Pool, and would have probably been taken sometime around 1900.

I would like to thank Bill Mayo sincerely for offering this wonderful picture.

Kind regards
David

We have mentioned the steamboat before, in this article, in which I noted Chasetown publican J. Donaldson was the operator of the ill-fated enterprise to run the steamboat for pleasure trips on what was then Norton Pool; this advert was published in the Lichfield Mercury, as found by Peter ‘Pedro’ Cutler.

I believe the other active local historian Clive Roberts has done a lot of research on the Donaldson steamboat service, and has some fascinating material to come in a future book. Stay tuned for news of that.

Thanks to David and Bill – if you have anything to add about either photo, please do comment or mail me: BrownhillsBob at goolgemail dot com. Cheers!