What a wonderful piece of ephemera! Beautiful, high-quality scan by Lawrence Hodgkinson.
A lovely enquiry for the Bank Holiday weekend came in a couple of days ago courtesy of reader Lawrence Hodgkinson, who has submitted a beautiful scan of a rather unusual ticket stub from a railway special excursion in 1952.
I’ll let Lawrence explain:
Bob,
The attached scan is of a Sankeys W.M.C. Half Day Excursion railway ticket from Brownhills to Colwyn Bay in August 1952.
This is number 285 and for a Juvenile under 16. As the tickets were specialy printed for this excursion, presumably there were at least 285 people on the trip.
Can you perhaps find out more about this trip? Do any of the children who went on this trip still remember it? There is a Sankeys Working Mens Club at 166 Lichfield Road, Brownhills.
There used to be a Working Mens Club in Lichfield Road near the station, but I don’t know if it was called Sankeys.
Perhaps there was more than one Sankeys Working Mens Club. Was Sankeys Corner at Chase Terrace named after a WMC?
Regards
Lawrence Hodgkinson
Now there’s a corker of a challenge for the holiday weekend!
I’ve said before that clubs were at the very heart of Brownhills life for years, and Laurence is correct – the Sportsman (now demolisted) was built as a W.M.C. and known as the ‘Top Club’ for years, as well as the Middleton House which was, I believe, the Bottom Club and in-between, Sankeys. Please correct me if I’m wrong.
I have no idea of the derivation of the name Snakeys Corner, and if it’s related. Anyone?
Thanks to Lawrence for a real boster of a question, and for sharing a beautiful artefact. If you can help, please do – either by commenting here, or mailing me: BrownhillsBob at Googlemail dot com.
Cheers.