Black Country Ride No 1 - Haden Hill, Cradley Heath, Langley

Our very own Roving Reporter Dennis revisits the Black Country to find out what's still there and what has changed.

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Black Country Ride No 1 - Haden Hill, Cradley Heath, Langley

Postby Dennis » Thu Oct 22, 2009 12:22 pm

My thanks to San and the Team. Right then, let's go. This is the first of, I hope, a series in which a middle-aged exile - me - revisits the Black Country to find out what's still there and what's not. And so much has gone lately that it's fast becoming a heady mix of archaeology and Proust sorry, I used to teach French! What I mean is the way childhood places trigger vivid memories and emotions.

My usual route takes me in an arc from Halesowen through Dudley to West Bromwich and Smethwick. This time I'm crossing the imagined Hagley Road border with Birmingham at the Warley Odeon, now equally imaginary, since the magnificent white-tiled Egyptian style 1930s cinema and later 1960s Top Rank bowling alley where I used to meet my mates from Oldbury Grammar (including Martin Elliott, who later took that Tennis Girl poster photo, and Mick Aston, now of C4's Time Team) has vanished, replaced by an outstandingly nondescript office block. Onwards and upwards, into Quinton, past the parish church where our music teacher Mr Nicholas was organist and where there were good dances in the church hall back then, and past that most recent victim of Pub Demolition Virus, the immense and colourful King's Highway, why didn't I take a picture of it while I still could? (Story of my life.) At least the picture house is still there, the Cinema with Strange Names "the Danilo, the Essoldo, the Quinton Classic, currently the Reel Cinema [sic] scene of many a chaste (and brief) encounter in my youth. But all of this small-scale human stuff soon gives way to the grandest natural spectacle the area has to offer, the magnificent view as you tumble over the rim of Mucklows Hill and begin that fabulous descent into Halesowen, which I used to attempt on bike. In front of you are the twin hills of Clent, beyond is the obelisk on Wychbury Hill (a wooded Iron Age fort, full of bluebells in spring, and haunted (OK, another time...), distant ranges like the Clee Hills, Cannock, Great Barr, and of course Rowley graced with its elegant concrete radio mast (not).

Even the bottom of Mucklows doesn't disappoint, there's still at least one genuine factory chimney, at Walter Somers, I think, am I alone in missing them? Where have all the chimneys gone, especially the very old short square ones? and the non-existent station and railway line of my childhood that ran out past the Blue Bird toffee factory at Hunnington and in the other direction towards the Old Hill tunnel (don't get me started). I get a frisson every time I (don't) cross it.

Our first stop will be Haden Hill Park.
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Re: Our Den - Out and About

Postby Dennis » Thu Oct 22, 2009 12:36 pm

Haden Hill Park - We turn right and past an area once called Furnace, which tells you all you need to know about the place in the nineteenth century. Along the ridge on the right for a mile or so there are traces of an embankment and trees which outline the course of the old railway which crossed the bottom of Gosty Hill, the blue-brick base of the bridge is still visible. It's not easy parking at Haden Hill, so I leave my car in a side street and climb. But, as they used to say, "the traveller is rewarded"with a superb view from the summit, out across Old Hill and Netherton to distant Dudley and the spire of St Thomas's where just about everybody in a very wide area was "hatched, matched and despatched", according to the family trees I've seen. Not been to Haden Hill since the 1970s. Has it changed? Not massively. The Victorian house has been museum-ized, which is a better fate than many, and the Tudor hall looks just the same. There's a wedding car with white streamers on the bonnet outside, from which I deduce that the place is at least paying for itself. This hilltop and the grounds have real atmosphere on a bright autumn afternoon, and a strong sense of a lot having happened here, the Civil War etc. No surprise that there's apparently a Grey Lady somewhere around. I go down the slope to the Lower Pool, very picturesque with leaves of translucent orange and yellow, there are some youngsters doing what I'd always wanted to do when rules were still rules - fishing. Their enormous dog looks as if it's spotted its next meal as I walk quickly past, its furious barking echoes round the valley. If it weren't firmly tethered to the railings it would make short work of Your Correspondent.

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Haden Hill Park, Old Hill
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Haden Hill House
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Lower Pool, Haden Hill
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View from Haden Hill across Old Hill to Netherton and Dudley

For full view click on the images in our Gallery......... here

My car is still there, always a relief. Onwards under the nicely painted railway bridge and along Old Hill main street - bit of a bottleneck, not too different from what I remember - then left down Reddal Hill Road and past a brand new estate centred on Tinsley Avenue, but which till a couple of years ago was Eliza Tinsley's famous chain factory. Memory Lane beckons once more. In about 1959 my parents met a couple on holiday in Llandudno, Sidney and Edith Woodhall, who were caretakers at Tinsley's. They all became friends and we used to visit them there. I remember being taken around the deserted factory by their daughter, I played on the typewriters in the office and the mills had piles of chains, swarf and an overpowering smell of machine oil. All that's gone now, I got there - as usual - too late to take any decent photos, in any case it was all fenced off by the demolition men. Anyway, Eliza Tinsley's was your genuine nineteenth-century factory surviving into the 1960s, a complete time-warp. Thank you for the experience, Sid and Edith.

Next Stop - Cradley Heath
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Re: Our Den - Out and About

Postby linell » Thu Oct 22, 2009 1:12 pm

Really enjoyed your travels Dennis and the pictures, took me back to the places I knew so well. Many thanks from Linell.
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Re: Our Den - Out and About

Postby Dennis » Thu Oct 22, 2009 1:53 pm

A pleasure, Linell. There's more! D.
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Re: Our Den - Out and About

Postby Dennis » Thu Oct 22, 2009 1:57 pm

Next stop Cradley Heath, just down the road, which seems to have had the proverbial hyperspace bypass visited upon it since the last time I looked. At least the new supermarket takes traffic away from the main street, the focus of which used to be the crossroads at Five Ways. The junction is still just about recognizable as I turn down the hill toward the Stour. Not a lot of people know (by which, of course, I mean, until recently, me ...) that the river is the boundary between Cradley Heath, which in happier times stood in Staffordshire and is now part of Sandwell, and Cradley tout court, which was in Worcestershire and now rejoices in being part of Dudley. (I have dual nationality, born in West Brom, grew up in Oldbury, so I'm on both sides, lads) The very fine tower of St Peter's, Cradley smiles down on the valley, and on this sunny day the once notoriously filthy river actually looks blue. There are still metal works in the vicinity, so the place retains something from a time when it was the focus of huge and now unimaginable industrial activity.

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The Five Ways Pub at Cradley Heath ............link

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Bridge over River Stour .........................link

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River Stour, Cradley Heath Staffs ............link

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Re: Our Den - Out and About

Postby Dennis » Thu Oct 22, 2009 2:21 pm

I retrace my steps through Old Hill and up past Blackheath crematorium, through which so many friends, neighbours, and indeed relatives (my Grandma) have passed over the years. As cemeteries go it's quite a fine one, extensive, set on a hillside, good views to the west from the top of the slope. I head up the main road and through Blackheath town, then up the hill to what's left of Rowley Regis village, to take a photo of St Giles from the spot where so many early postcard photographers positioned their tripods. What was once a narrow village street with dwellings going back to the eighteenth century is now a wide and fairly anonymous sweep of dual carriageway with modern houses and gardens. I suppose I can't argue with that, picturesque poverty isn't half so bad if it isn't you that's poor. The Britannia pub is still there, as is the Sir Robert Peel, but with many other pubs it's very touch-and-go at the moment. I've never been a pub man, but the Britannia was one of my Dad's favourites. (Hang on, wasn't there a park round here somewhere once, Britannia Park was it called? With a boating pool? Which I went to when I was little? Once again the old refrain Ubi sunt?, where are they now?...Gone the same way as Birchley Park, no doubt. Or has it by some miracle survived?)

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St Giles Church, Rowley Regis Village ....link

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'The Britannia' Rowley Regis ............. link

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Re: Our Den - Out and About

Postby Dennis » Thu Oct 22, 2009 2:44 pm

I feel the call of Oldbury, which I still think of as home, but I'll save that pleasure for another day.
I make for Langley, where my grandparents had a fish and chip chop on Station Road in the 1940s, next to another place with several names, the New Inns pub, now the Bridge. In September 2009 a fire broke out and destroyed part of the Langley Maltings, a Grade II Listed building built in 1870, an local landmark and as much an unchanging part of Langley as Albright and Wilson's - sorry, I mean Rhodia. It doesn't look good, much of the roof has gone. The building had been unused for a while, it's going to take a lot of money and effort to turn it into something usable again. Don Giovanni at the Langley Maltings, with a glass of pinot grigio by the canal during the interval?... Is anything at all going to happen in the middle of a recession, I wonder? At least the level crossing is still there at Langley Green station, a ten-minute wait always guaranteed in which to mull things over... More later.

© Dennis Wood 2010

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Langley Maltings - 2009 ..............link


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Re: Our Den - Out and About

Postby Northern Lass » Thu Oct 22, 2009 2:53 pm

That was fantastic reading our Den......brilliant really enjoyed that... thank you!
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Re: Our Den - Out and About

Postby Dennis » Thu Oct 22, 2009 2:58 pm

That's very kind, NL. Hmm, where next, I wonder?... D.
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Re: Our Den - Out and About

Postby Jimmy » Thu Oct 22, 2009 4:00 pm

Hi Dennis,

How about a picture of Joseph Shakespeare's factory.
Just trying to do my bit for BCC, bringing families back together.
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Re: Our Den - Out and About

Postby peterd » Thu Oct 22, 2009 4:38 pm

cheers dennis enjoy your tour whens the next one :lol:
A person should have an opinion on everything, It becomes tact whether you reveal that opinion or not.

http://www.deneview.co.uk/
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Re: Our Den - Out and About

Postby Annie » Thu Oct 22, 2009 5:12 pm

Dennis I really enjoyed that tour and pictures, I have never been to the Black Country but it gave me an insight of the places where my ancestors lived. so than you . :grin:

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Re: Our Den - Out and About

Postby Maths girl » Thu Oct 22, 2009 5:22 pm

Jimmy wrote:Hi Dennis,

How about a picture of Joseph Shakespeare's factory.


I'm with you on that one Jimmy. My uncle and grandfather both worked there for most of their working lives and I can remember being taken round the factory when I was small and seeing the chains being made - that was before H&S got into everything!!

Thank you from me Dennis too as so many of the places you mentioned appear when my mother is talking of her childhood.

Her favourite 1947 story is of being stuck on Mucklows Hill on a double decker bus during the thick snow that they had that year!

Maths girl
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Re: Our Den - Out and About

Postby Dennis » Thu Oct 22, 2009 6:26 pm

Funny you should mention Shakespeare, Jimmy and Maths Girl: there was a factory in a side street near the Stour bridge called Shakespeare, I nearly took a pic because I've got quite a few Shakespeares on my family tree. At least there was a lot of noise and activity around there, which in these times is reassuring!
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Re: Our Den - Out and About

Postby Maths girl » Thu Oct 22, 2009 7:47 pm

Dennis wrote:Funny you should mention Shakespeare, Jimmy and Maths Girl: there was a factory in a side street near the Stour bridge called Shakespeare, I nearly took a pic because I've got quite a few Shakespeares on my family tree. At least there was a lot of noise and activity around there, which in these times is reassuring!


You lost me here - whereabouts is the Stour Bridge that you are referring to? Which side street was this Shakespeare's in?

The firm I was talking about started in I think GArratts Lane in Old Hill and moved to Cox's Lane just above the railway line I don't know whether it has moved again sine the 1970's
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