BrownhillsBob's Brownhills Blog

I’ve noted here before that change to a place most often happens incrementally, in small but contiguous steps. Sometimes it can be large and dramatic, as when Brownhills was reshaped by the construction of Hillards (now Tesco), or when the M6 Toll was built. More often than not though, change is fractal, fractional and fragmented. A building is replaced here, a road slightly changes course there, and so on.

Recently, we delved into the history of the Salvation Army Hall, in High Street, near to the Warreners Arms, and I featured the photograph below:

From Geoff Harrington & Clarice Mayo’s wonderful book ‘Memories of Brownhills Past’. Click for a larger version, and note the Warreners Arms outhouses, built in the same style as the pub.

The image was taken from Severn House, the smallest of the four tower blocks eventually built in Brownhills – it’s the pink one that still stands today next to Silver Court. From the Warrener’s Arms, top right, to bottom left, spans the High Street. The road leaving to the left no longer exists as anything other than a path. Reader Peter asked what it was called in  the comments to the original article.

The book caption to the photo actually tells us, but only realised that after digging into the mapping archive, and I believe I’ve found a map contemporaneous with this image give or take a few years. The map has been scanned, and I include it below.

The road was called New Street. New Road – which still exists today – would be out of shot to the lower left. I think the map, and the image are both late 1960s. Bear in mind there is some inherent ‘lag’ in the mapping due to surveys taking place some time before drafting.

This is a 1:2,500 Ordnance Survey paper print of central Brownhills. I don’t have a date for it, but I suspect it to be late 60s, about the same time the photo was taken. The map is fascinating, and very large; click it for t he full size version. Bear in mind it’s been scanned from drafting film and is exhibiting some geometric distortion.

The relevant section in the photo I’ve cropped out and annotated below.

here we can see where relevant features on the photo are on the map. New Street is highlighted in green; it was truncated as part of the Warren Place development, then still ongoing. The gasworks would be out of shot to the right. Note the wonderful outbuildings of the Warreners, in the same gabled style. The photo caption notes the houses had been cleared from New Street. Click for a larger version.

Here’s what it looks like today:

Note that Humphries House – also still extant – is built directly on the site of the town gasworks.

There is a huge amount of interesting stuff on this map. It really is a gem, and shows the increments of the 60s and 70s in mid flow.

Take this section from Ogley Hay, around the Parish Church of St James:

Ogley Hay, late 1960s. What is the Calvary Mission? Click for a larger version.

There’s stuff here relevant to the postcard I shared last week; note the war memorial at the Church Road entrance to the churchyard of St. James; Ogley Hay County Primary School on to the left of shot, where I thought were houses – that’s actually the front of that school, isn’t it? Notice also the Police Station – higher up Church Road than I imagined – and the Calvary Mission, whatever that was, or is.  I have a feeling that’s still there.

Note also, the section of Short Street from Church Road to Brickiln Street has yet to be constructed.

A wonderful postcard, and another demonstration of how historical threads intertwine.

There is more interest at Co-op corner:

When did the junction change from this bizarre layout? Middleton House Club – now the site of the tyre depot and nearby industrial units – when did that go?

Other stuff on the main map I noticed; check out the detail of the High Street. The structure marked ‘platform’ behind the old Co-op – what was that? The Regent Cinema, Station Hotel and basins. Detail around the Pier Street Bridge – Pike Helve – and around Holland Park, The Hussey estate and Station.

One of the most intriguing things is Silver Court. It’s bigger to the north by some degree than on the map, which shows the offices as being in the middle. They aren’t in real life. What happened there?

If I get time over the weekend, I’ll see if I can’t correct the geometry a bit and make this map into a Google Earth overlay.

If you spot anything, please do comment here or mail me: BrownhillsBob at Googlemail dot com. Cheers.

This imagery from Bing! Maps shows that Silver Court, bottom left, is anything but symmetrical which is not how the map above shows it to be. Anyone know the story? Click for a larger version.

Beneath the rooftops, there’s a whole community and history in an otherwise unassuming post-industrial town.

This is a very self-indulgent note to mark a bit of an arbitrary milestone. This treatise is a bit rambly, and I’m not happy with it, but I’ve agonised over it too long and it’s the beast way I can put the things I want to say. I’ve deliberately not linked to any other articles here. If you’re a newcomer, and curious, I actively encourage you to search the archive. There’s a lot of it – nearly 2,000 posts and 11,000 comments.

Those who follow me on social media will already know that on Sunday evening, 17th November 2013, this site passed the one million hit mark.

I’d like to thank all the readers, commentors and contributors – the stars of this thing – that make it work so well. All the folk who dedicate time to writing, researching and contemplating matters of local history, current affairs and other stuff covered herein. All those who have helped on a personal level. Those around me who put up with me doing this. The fellow members of the local online community who’ve been so supportive.

I won’t quote names, except for one, because I don’t want to leave anyone out. But you wouldn’t be reading this now were it not for The YamYam – Mark Blackstock’s remarkable project to collate the disparate online threads of Walsall. It remains a beacon.

Managing this thing is hard work, but the rewards are fantastic. Seeing something obscure come to life, spark debate or restore lost contacts is wonderful. We’ve connected people far away back to their roots, debated the nature of our history, argued the toss over local politics. And this has been happening on a pretty much daily basis for four and a half years now. It would all have stopped a long while ago but for the interest shown by you lot.

It’s been hard at times. Sometimes, I run out of ideas, or energy, or enthusiasm. Sometimes, the grind of it gets me down. In curating the Brownhills Blog, I realised that  often, your opponents come from where you’d least expect, and that some people will take any effort to create anything at all as a personal attack. I learned a lot about the darkness of some aspects of human nature that I didn’t really want to know. Fortunately, the hassle is small compared to the pleasure.

This is an odd journey, and I have no idea where it’s going.

For those that have never noticed, there’s a counter in the sidebar on the right. It counts steadily as people visit the site, but cleverly ignores my visits. WordPress, the host I use for this blog, keeps daily anonymous statistics for what visitors read, what they search for, and in broad terms, what led them here. All this data is logged and held, and it shows I started this blog in the last days of April, 2009. Since then, traffic has grown steadily, approximately doubling in volume every calendar year up to now.  At the moment, the site is holding steady at between about 900-1500 hits per day.

Personally, I don’t think the traffic will grow much now; I think If anything, it’s probably peaked.

In terms of other popular sites on the net, this one is tiny, insignificant, a minute blip of traffic in a sea of much better content. But for a very specifically focussed site, it’s not too shabby, and I’m proud that a small community seems to have developed here.

I had no idea, and still don’t, what I’m doing. I have no writing experience, and still find the writing process quite difficult. I think my style and punctuation skills have improved a bit, but my typing skills are still lousy. I still read back every article I write and wince. In many ways, this site is rambling, shambling and badly written, but I like to think that it makes up for it’s deficiencies with the enthusiasm and interest I attempt to share.

I’m aware that I’m opinionated, and get lots of stuff wrong. I’m know only too well that my style and manner irritates and alienates a lot of people. However, I believe that something like this should have an opinion, a position and be prepared to argue it. I welcome discussion. It’s how we move forward and develop ideas and hopefully, mutual respect. I’m happy to accept I may be wrong.

When I started this, I had no idea where it was going or what it was going to do. I had a lot of stuff to get off my chest. Local politics figured much more prominently then than it does now; but others locally are writing with far more clarity on that stuff than ever I could, and the merry-go-round of local power confounds me theses days.

When I tentatively began to look at local history stuff I had no idea how large the subject was, or how little I actually knew. Much of what I thought I knew, I found to be arrant toss. The material I found in books was good, but dry. I wanted to make it a bit softer, to have discussions, enquiries, and record them. I wanted people to take back their history from the dusty shelves of the mystics and charismatics that often people the local history scene. I hate the gatekeeper mentality, and always will. History belongs to everyone, and the best way to learn about it is to take it back.

There’s stuff I’m very proud to have shared, from lost jazz tapes to intimate family histories. The generosity and openness of the readership has been amazing, and has often brought me to tears.

I have never had a desire to make any money out of this, nor will I have. The only ads to appear here are ones placed occasionally by WordPress, over which I have no control. Running this blog incurs a financial cost, but it’s worth it, as it’s a labour of love. 

At the moment, I’m tired, and may have a break for a week or two sometime soon. But if I do, I shall give notice and I will be back, for this is far to addictive to stop, and I have too much work from other folks waiting  to be shared.

This blog remains the work of a man with a brutally short attention span wandering through life, finding stuff, pointing to it and shouting ‘Look!’ loudly. I don’t know where it’s going at all. But as long as people are still reading, I’ll endeavour to keep it going.

Thanks.

One of the things I’ve been desperate to explain to people is the unexpected beauty of our locality. I regularly leaves me open-mouthed in amazement.

This is a gorgeous thing, lovingly curated and transcribed by the Young David Evans. The first in a series of articles created by David from the memoirs of Walsall Wood lady Audrey Proffitt, which form a sequence of vignettes illuminating life in a working class mining community in the 1930s and 40s.

I’d like to thank Audrey and her niece, Sheila for what will be a remarkable series of articles, which I know will delight, inform and entertain readers interested in the history of Walsall Wood.

Both ladies also helped create the fine article on the Walsall Wood Cossacks, the equine daredevils of the village.

Being able to post such fine material is a privilege and an honour.

David wrote:

Walsall Wood in 1926, from Aerofilms. Streets Corner is four-fifths up the picture, and central. It wouldn’t have been greatly different in Audrey’s day. Image kindly supplied by David Evans.

Childhood Memories of Mrs Audrey Proffitt, née Southall, a Walsall Wood girl

Some 31 years ago Mrs Audrey Proffitt, who was born in 1927, wrote an interesting article about her childhood home near Streets Corner, Walsall Wood. This was subsequently published and appeared in Margaret Brice’s ‘Short History of Walsall Wood’ local history book.

Then, in 2008 Audrey sat down again, took a pen, and wrote a much longer article, 26 sides of neat handwritten notes, all without correction or spelling errors, detailing some of her experiences and memories. Quite recently I have been delighted to meet her, talk with her, and hear about Walsall Wood and some of the times at home and at school, and other events from her childhood at Streets Corner then later in Coronation Road. She left school in 1941 at the age of 14, and worked in the Crabtree factory in Walsall where she made switchgear for Lancaster bombers.

Her niece Sheila has kindly sent me a typed-up copy of these memories, which run to two chapters, and from this wonderfully rich and captivating material I have taken some extracts which may interest readers.

I would like to thank Audrey, her family and especially Sheila for all their generosity and help and I am delighted to offer this tantalising glimpse of life in Walsall Wood in the late 1920s and 1930s ,as seen through the eyes of a young local girl.

David Evans, September 2013

From Streets Corners looking towards Walsall Wood Colliery and on to Brownhills. I believe the last terrace gable is probably the one still standing today. This is the neighbourhood Audrey grow up in. A great image, from ‘Memories of Old Walsall Wood’ by Bill Mayo and John Sale.

The home

I remember the old cottages very well, three in a row but the end one which we lived in was bigger than the other two. We had two bedrooms, the others had one. We had a black lead grate, as they were called, with a big oven in the one side. The other two had inglenook fires which had a brick seat on either and you walked under the mantelpiece to sit by the fire. We had very big pieces of coal called rakers on the fire and it was covered over with slack which was all the coal dust and chippings. My Mom always threw water over the slack heap, as it was called, to make it last longer. Any waste water from peeling the vegetables to emptying the old zinc bath was taken to the coal shed and poured over the slack. There was always a very large cast iron kettle on the hob. This was our hot water for having a wash or bath or washing the crocks etc. It was continuously being topped up with a jug of water as it would be much too heavy to keep carrying it to the one and only tap we had which was in a lean-to building at the back of the house and known as the brewhouse.

There was a gas-lamp in the living room which was lit by a spill. Now making spills was a job for us children. You cut a newspaper up into strips and rolled it up tight to look like a drinking straw. These were kept on the hearth, standing in an old stone pickle jar and they were used for lighting the lamp and men used them to light cigarettes or pipes. Just pop it in the fire to light it, use it for whatever, then blow it out like a match.

This is the Walsall Wood Audrey Proffitt would recognise. From ‘Memories of Old Walsall Wood’ by Bill Mayo and John Sale.

The toilet was a small brick hut at the bottom of the garden with something like a small dustbin under a wooden bench with a hole in the middle. There were no toilet rolls in those days and one of our jobs as children was to cut up old newspaper into 6” x 6” squares, poke a meat skewer through one corner, tie some string to it and hang them on a nail in the lavatory. The men who worked for the council used to come round to empty the toilet, but this was done in the middle of the night. We would hear the noise of the cart and horse and see the glow of the flares which the men carried, and some flares were attached to the cart like massive big candles. These men were known as ‘night soilers’, but then modern water toilets came in and oh boy! did we think this was exciting. The toilets were built close to the house; no more walking up the garden in the cold. I remember the neighbours lifting the lid off the drain and watching how it worked. They would flush a piece of paper down and then run to watch it pass along the drain into the sewer. It was something wonderful to us.