The Wheatsheaf shortly before it was demolished, in a cracking photo supplied by Mike Leonard. It stood on the corner of Ogley Road and Mill Road.
Every so often, I get an intriguing question from a reader right out of the blue – and I had just such an enquiry in today which really has me puzzling from reader Margaret King – this concerns a subject we’ve covered a little before, that of wartime evacuees – and one of the favourite historical concerns of readers: local pubs.
Margaret writes:
Hello there,
Apologies for mailing you out of the blue but I Came across your website Brownhills Bob and wondered if you might be able to help me.
My dad during the war evacuated from London to Brownhills and has been thinking of trying to trace where it was he stayed. Unfortunately my grandparents have now both passed away and my dad was only young so memories are not so good.
What he recalls very strongly is a pub on the corner of the road he stayed on and he is convinced it was called the Monkey Puzzle. I’ve had a quick google for this and if this is the correct name then it doesn’t appear to still exist. Would you happen to have heard of a pub named this or similar in Brownhills during the 1940s? Or, if you don’t know or have researched back that far, would you know of any local historians for the area that you could give us the contact details for?
Many thanks for any help you may be able to give.
Kind regards
Margaret King
I have no idea. Several pubs locally were/are on street corners; off the top of my head, The Shire Oak, The Boot, The Wheatsheaf, The Warreners Arms, The Prince of Wales, The Pear Tree, The Jolly Collier and the Railway Tavern were all more or less fitting that description.
The Monkey Puzzle has me totally baffled. I know The Avenues were alleged to have been called Packman’s Puzzle, but I think that’s a more recent affectation, and there was no pub on any nearby corner, unless we count the old Middleton House club.
I welcome views on this – please do comment here or mail me: BrownhillsBob at Googlemail dot com. Thank you.
The Railway Tavern – another lost pub pictured here in 1993 by Mike Leonard – stood on the corner of Lichfield Road and Narrow Lane.