Here’s some images I had in with set from top local photographer and friend of the blog Peter Booth, who sent me a remarkable and very popular bunch of scans last week of the 1972 Brownhills Carnival, with these of the Wesleyan Church included.
The pictures were donated by Steve Craddock from a collection taken by his father, Roy Craddock. The Craddock family were very much involved in the drive to construct the Silver Street Methodist Church in Brownhills that replaced the Wesleyan Chapel and Mount Zion, two methodist churches in Brownhills High Street which were due to be lost to redevelopment.
I featured a remarkable set showing the construction of Silver Street Church from Fred Booth a few days ago here.
These are remarkably good photos, beautifully scanned and restored by Peter. They are fantastically clear and there is some absolutely stunning detail which I’ll leave readers to find and debate.
I’ve covered this chapel before in this article.
The Wesleyan Chapel was built in 1896 and stood on the north corner of Pier Street just opposite, and on the same side of the High Street as Provost Chemist, now a bathroom and plumbing shop. The land is currently vacant. Like Mount Zion, it was a remarkably austere building in the common local mMethodist Style; the Wesleyan was in very dark red terracotta brick and Mount Zion in blue Utopia.
Peter said:
Hello Bob
Had these photos donated to me a couple of weeks ago some of the old Wesleyan Chapel in the High Street.The chapel is 1967/68, these were donated to me by Steve Craddock taken by his Dad Roy he found them while sorting through his Dads old slides and thought they might be of interest to me.
There are quite a few more of the building of the Methodist church in silver street that once I’ve cleaned up and sorted I will send you.
These so far have cleaned up well showing a lot of detail.
Regards Peter Booth
Again, my thanks and gratitude to Peter, it’s a pleasure and an honour to feature material of this quality here – and a special thank you to the Craddock family for sharing some photos I thought we’d never see. Wonderful stuff. Thank you.
If readers have anything to add, please do comment here or mail me: Brownhillsbob at Googlemail dot com. Thanks.