An image from an eBay sale of a familiar, but slightly different image. Click for a larger version.

Whilst trawling the great tat-bazaar yesterday, I noticed a regular um, ‘reproducer’ of historical images (the least said about that the better) had an interesting take on a common image of Brownhills High Street and William Roberts Brewery that used to be behind the Station Hotel – It would have been about where B&M is today.

The auction is here – note it’s a ‘Photo from an Edwardian Image’ – you’re buying a print of an existing image, not the original. This is happening a lot on eBay and nothing has changed in that respect since I wrote this article and also this one.

The image seems like an original scan by whoever made it of a cropped version of the following image:

I’d guess it’s turn of the century, no later than 1915. On the left, Brewes bakery and the old Coffee Shop (later Plumber’s Paradise). On the right, The Station Hotel, and behind it, William Robert’s Station Brewery. I’ve never seen this image before. Image generously donated by Margaret Thompson – click for a larger version.

Note the lad on the extreme left holding something is in the right of the foreground group. In the auction image, the coffee shop is cropped out and the view up the high Street easier to see.

This image was beautifully cleaned up and restored by talented friend of the blog, Lisa Ashby a while back.

A classic image beautifully restored by the very talented Lisa Ashby.

As a guide to this picture, visible are the old coffee  shop on the corner of Lichfield Road (later Plumber’s Paradise), Brewes Bakery opposite, and a busy High Street with an assembled crew of interested kids. From the appearance I’d say it was taken between 1900-1910, and is a close relation of a much inferior card published by George Lewis.

This postcard, from Jan Farrow’s ‘Around Brownhills and Walsall Wood in old picture postcards’ is by George Lewis, and I’d say was the same photographer, on the same day.

I wonder what they did with the kids between the shots? This is an interesting illustration of the life and morphology of common historical images of areas we know. If you have a view on this, please do comment here or mail me: BrownhillsBob at Googlemail dot com. Cheers.