No, not that Joan Collins. Image kindly supplied by Reg Fullelove.

Reg ‘Aer Reg’ Fullelove continues to donate remarkable personal material to the Brownhills Blog – the chap is a dynamo, despite his advancing years, and the local historical record would be far the poorer without his generous contributions to it.

Today, I feature scans of a remarkable artefact – the program for the 1939 Brownhills Carnival, featuring a huge amount of content. You can browse the gallery of pages at the foot of the post, or download a PDF copy from the following link:

Brownhills Carnival 1939 – Official Programme – PDF version 7 megabytes

Clearly this is a well thumbed document that’s suffered some wear and tear, but I’ve cleaned up the scans and straightened them where possible.

David Evans had this to say about the program:

Hi Bob

Please find attached the scanned images from the 1939 Brownhills Carnival programme, which are offered with kind permission of Mr Reg Fullelove BEM, whose battered original, he scanned and bound into a booklet some while ago.

My sincere thanks are extended to dear Reg for his ongoing generosity.

kind regards
David

What is revealed is a witty, erudite document of a community at play the year the Second World War broke out – yet there’s little to indicate such an event was to occur. The advertisements, as ever with this kind of thing, are totally wonderful.

Note the advert for the Central Cafe. Does that make it the longest-standing shop in Brownhills?

This sits well alongside the 1934 carnival footage featured here before, again donated by Reg Fullelove.

My heartfelt thanks to the young David Evans for facilitating this and doing all the running around, and of course I thank Reg, to whom I owe a considerable debt at the moment. I must get that chap some beer!

I’m still looking for Brownhills Carnival material, no matter what the year. It’s a real gap in our collective history, so if you have anything at all, please comment or drop me a line: BrownhillsBob at Googlemail dot com. Thanks.