The Anglesey Arms on the Watling Street – once the haunt of local businessman and character Ralph Ferrie has been lost for many years now. Image from Clive’s book, originally from the Bill Mayo collection.

Since I’ve had some downtime this week, I’ve finally got around to reading local historian Clive Roberts’ latest book on local history ‘Old Public Houses of Brownhills (Part One)’ which I’ve been meaning to do for some time – and I have to say, it’s a cracker.

This book is exactly what I’ve come to expect from Clive: thoroughly researched, painstaking yet warm and readable, packed with useful and interesting information and pictures about the history of many existing and lost Brownhills pubs.

Clive has worked hard to not just document the hostelries everyone knows about, but he’s turned up lots of material on the pubs people don’t recall – like The Queens Head, as shown below:

An example of the fantastic wealth of information Clive’s book contains.

One of the things that particularly stuck out is that Clive has indisputably solved the mystery of the Turks Head – and the actuality is somewhat different to the commonly accepted local history explanations of this lost drinking den.

Old Public Houses of Brownhills kept me entertained for an otherwise idle afternoon, and I commend it to anyone who has an interest in Brownhills history. Like all limited run local history books, get in quick as once they’re sold out there are not generally reprints – and I think there are only a few of these left!

Clive has previously written excellent and sought after books on Shire Oak, Walsall Wood and Brownhills. He comments and contributes frequently here on the blog and is a stalwart of the local history community.

There are sixteen pubs featured, and each entry covers known landlords and some of the past history from newspaper reports and other sources, together with some interesting photographs.

Copies are available for just £8 each.

You can obtain yours from: Brownhills Library, Walsall Wood Library and also The DEI Convenience Store (Corner or Red shop) in Friezland Lane, and last but not least Walsall Local History Centre. I believe Clive can also sell through eBay if that’s easy for you.

If you have any questions or observations for Clive, please do comment here or mail me: BrownhillsBob at  Googlemail dot com, and I’ll draw them to his attention.

I wish Clive all the best and look forward to Part Two!

Another wonderful book from Walsall Wood author Clive Roberts – available right now!