Black Country Ride No 6 - Whiteheath and Blackheath

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 6 - Whiteheath and Blackheath

Postby Dennis » Sun Jan 31, 2010 4:45 pm

Here's Dennis's latest.......

Whiteheath and Blackheath

"I remember, I remember, / The house where I was born". Well, not exactly... I was born in a hospital, like most people, and it was probably just as well. But if there were such a house, it would be in Whiteheath. "Where's Whiteheath?, I hear you ask. Well...near Blackheath. I can still see my Birmingham classmates rocking with helpless mirth when I had to give the schoolmaster my address - "So come on, which one is it, boy, Whiteheath or Blackheath?"... I hated school much of the time, like most normal people, but fortunately I had Whiteheath. Or Whiteheath Gate, to be precise, although only maps ever call it that. On them you'll see that it once straddled two counties, Worcestershire and Staffordshire, and when you crossed the border the number of potholes in the road inexplicably increased.

The Rowley hills seen from the motorway and Whiteheath - small.jpg
The Rowley hills seen from the motorway and Whiteheath - small.jpg (42.88 KiB) Viewed 11569 times

In a far-off time, before Sandwell Metropolitan Borough Council was so much as a twinkle in a bureaucrat's eye, the village of Whiteheath lay untroubled, surrounded by canals and stagnant pools full of newts and frogspawn in the spring, pit mounds of sticky grey earth, quarries, marl-holes and abandoned mineshafts, linnets' nests and grazing barge horses. What more could any lad want? Well, probably not the Blackbatters, a gang with an unexplained but evidently huge grudge who would periodically invade our field from over where the Blackbat mine had been. But that was rare.

2. The open gate, Richards Close, Whiteheath.jpg
2. The open gate, Richards Close, Whiteheath.jpg (53.98 KiB) Viewed 11568 times

"Hindsight is an alarmingly precise science", as somebody once said, and fifty years later you can see that none of this could last. On my return, on this miraculously sunny day during a glacial winter, I find that the vast open field where the Titford Colliery had stood long ago and which once had views to West Bromwich and the Rowley hills has been turned by persons unknown into an urban forest - sorry, Urban Forest - with huge trees now towering over the gardens.

3. The Entrance to Whiteheath urban forest - small.jpg
3. The Entrance to Whiteheath urban forest - small.jpg (41.37 KiB) Viewed 11567 times

It even has a rural stile to put you in the right ecological frame of mind as you enter and then pick your way along a muddy path down to the canal arm fringed with rushes where I used to dream of catching a pike. Nothing stirs down by the water. "By Jove, Carruthers, it's too quiet here, I don't like it..." But the unseen natives have left us a reminder of their keen aesthetic sense in the form of a Tate Modern installation, Three Shopping Trolleys on a Bed of Reeds. I find I'm strangely moved.

4. Portway canal arm, the bay - small.jpg
4. Portway canal arm, the bay - small.jpg (47.05 KiB) Viewed 11554 times

Out onto Birchfield Lane, the old turnpike road from Blackheath to Oldbury. The New Hotel where my Dad used to drink is still there, with a new moniker (as is currently the fashion), The Whiteheath Tavern, but - alas - minus its splendidly appropriate painted sign which once hung outside, the winding gear of a coalmine. I used to sit in its backyard, drinking Vimto and scoffing crisps. There was always a huge pile of coke there for the boiler, the old blue brick yard wall is till there. Running by the side of the pub to Richards Close was a long sloping passageway called The Gulley down which we would frequently thunder on roller skates, not worrying too much whether we'd be able to stop before we hit the street and the wheels of a passing dustcart... Compare and contrast with now.

5. The Whiteheath Tavern, Birchfield Lane, formerly New Hotel - small.jpg
5. The Whiteheath Tavern, Birchfield Lane, formerly New Hotel - small.jpg (47.38 KiB) Viewed 11567 times

6. The passageway from Birchfield Lane to Richard Close, Whiteheath - small.jpg
6. The passageway from Birchfield Lane to Richard Close, Whiteheath - small.jpg (47.52 KiB) Viewed 11567 times

The Methodist church is still there on Birchfield Lane. I remember it being built to replace the old one opposite and seeing it regularly thronged with people, it's a St John's Ambulance centre now. The Bull's Head pub, however, outside which we used to wait for the Midland Red 217 to Oldbury, is still in the same line of business.

7. The Tom Gough Centre, Birchfield Lane, formerly Whiteheath Methodist Church - small.jpg
7. The Tom Gough Centre, Birchfield Lane, formerly Whiteheath Methodist Church - small.jpg (47.91 KiB) Viewed 11566 times

8. The Bull pub, Whiteheath  - small.jpg
8. The Bull pub, Whiteheath - small.jpg (46.63 KiB) Viewed 11566 times

The oldest buildings were a row of ancient cottages going towards the old Gate pub on the corner. You actually stepped down off the road into the tiny sweet shop run by a very old lady, Mrs Brain. It was like returning to an earlier archaeological level. I remember scampering about with a friend in the back gardens when the cottages were being demolished.

The semi-rural village of Whiteheath which I remember has virtually gone. It clustered around a row of Victorian shops by the crossroads, in front of what is now the brightly coloured high rise Lancaster House, currently being renovated in the Chinese style with a pagoda roof. The grocery shop - was it Sammy Hadley's? - stood on the corner opposite the Gate pub and there were several others in a row, including the fish shop run by friends of my Mum's family, Bade and Annie, where I used to collect wet fish on a Friday. Annie was a nice lady with at least one finger missing from her hand, but it never affected her dexterity with the potato slicer. Across the road from the shops there was a piece of waste ground where from time to time a travelling fair would pitch camp for a few nights, all loud generators and candy floss. Beyond that were the steep grey "tocky banks" which hid a large pool where I used to fish for roach. The thirsty village had at least four pubs - the New Hotel, the Bull's Head, the Gate and the Vine. The Whiteheath Gate pub still stands, the Vine is now the Fox Tavern. The landlord of the Vine supplemented his income by keeping chickens and once took me and his son named Randy (I presume Randolph), who I used to play with, to Kidderminster Cattle Market, which was like stepping straight into a sepia Edwardian postcard. At some point early in the 1960s the English Martyrs Catholic church was built next to the former Whiteheath fairground, it's one of the few points of reference from those times that I still recognize.

9. The Fox Tavern, formerly the Vine, and Lancaster House, Whiteheath - small.jpg
9. The Fox Tavern, formerly the Vine, and Lancaster House, Whiteheath - small.jpg (46.53 KiB) Viewed 11566 times

10. The English Martyrs R C Church, Whiteheath - small.jpg
10. The English Martyrs R C Church, Whiteheath - small.jpg (48.12 KiB) Viewed 11566 times

I was a bookish youth and corresponded with Big Chief I-Spy at his Wigwam-By-The-Water in Bouverie Street, London virtually every week about something or other - a rare Victorian post box I'd come across on holiday or the finer points of the Renault Dauphine. The Big Chief, God bless him, lived to be 106 and he deserved to: he always replied with patience and encouragement to my interminable ramblings, even sending me biros with red ink (his followers were known as Redskins in those un-PC days). I amassed a collection of his slim volumes without which, of course, no journey then was complete - I-SPY on a Train Journey, I-SPY on the Pavement and so on. Unfortunately getting hold of the tribal paper, The News Chronicle, to decode the Chief's arcane puzzles and messages (the answer to one riddle was the word "tintinnabulation", which wasn't even in Pears' Cyclopaedia) and to see if I'd won a prize posed a considerable logistical challenge The paper shop in Whiteheath - which later doubled as a hairdresser's - was fine for Thompson's Weekly News or the Sports Argus, but the Chronicle was a bit special. So I had to jump on my Raleigh bike and pedal up to the New Inn in Blackheath, next to which was an old newsagent's shop which alone stocked it in the area.

The New Inn pub, Blackheath Small.jpg
The New Inn pub, Blackheath Small.jpg (49.23 KiB) Viewed 11565 times

Blackheath was a proper town with character, of course, and the Gateway to the South for me and my faithful Raleigh whenever I sped down Gosty Hill and out to Halesowen and Clent. It had at least two cinemas, one of which, the Rex, is now buried somewhere under Sainsbury's. It boasted various fish and chip shops run by the Westwood family, my Dad's cousins: if my calculations are correct, one of their shops lies beneath the aforesaid supermarket too. At the heart of the town was the Market Place, remarkable for its mysterious public conveniences built underground like a modern eco-house, with pillbox turrets showing above the surface, decorated with innumerable bull's-eye windows. All gone now, of course, and replaced by Blackheath's answer to Paris-Plage, a windswept shingle desert island, complete with boulders and wilting cordylines.

12. Market Place, Blackheath - small.jpg
12. Market Place, Blackheath - small.jpg (54.48 KiB) Viewed 11563 times

Unlike Oldbury, "Blackheath bleibt doch Blackheath" - Blackheath remains very much itself around its central square. The Midland Bank, Burton's and Broadmead may now be, respectively, the HSBC, Home Zone and Home Furnishing, but the buildings are still there. I had my first suit made at that Burton's shop, in a fetching shade of iridescent brown as I recall, (despite the irrefutable wisdom of the old saw: "Never trust a man in a brown suit") and bought my first transistor radio from Broadmead (spelt K-E-Y-N-S-H-A-M..."- how one annoying Radio Luxembourg advert can nevertheless summon up a whole lost era!). We even purchased our first television set on hire purchase in Blackheath, an Ekco, from a shop at the top of Oldbury Road, just below where Wilkinson's is now. Although it had a screen not much bigger than a postcard, we watched in January 1952 along with the rest of the world as Captain Carlsen doggedly refused to leave his doomed ship, The Flying Enterprise, which was listing for days in the wild North Atlantic. When, later that month, our brave old King stood at the airport to see his daughter off to Kenya, my mother said:" He'll catch his death, he's not wearing a hat" (everybody wore a hat then). The rest you know.

HSBC and former Burton's, Blackheath -  Small.jpg
HSBC and former Burton's, Blackheath - Small.jpg (47.11 KiB) Viewed 11563 times

14. The Shoulder of Mutton, Blackheath - small.jpg
14. The Shoulder of Mutton, Blackheath - small.jpg (47.67 KiB) Viewed 11563 times

And then there's Blackheath's celebrated market. What can one say about it? I warn you, whatever you do say will probably be wrong. I was convinced it was just the place to buy myself a pair of long johns against the cold (I'm not vain when it comes to thermals) or a string vest (there are a lot of holes in that story...), but I found neither - although I was probably looking in the wrong places. Yes, I admit, I was greatly distracted by the scent of herbal sweets coming from Teddy Gray's stall and beguiled by the plangent harmonies of the Everly Brothers drifting over from somewhere else. It's all there in the Market, books, cheese, fruit, even a café. My Dad would take me to the fish stall there on a Saturday afternoon to buy mussels which we'd boil up. We ate them with fresh bread and butter while listening to Sports Report on the radiogram. "... But now 'tis little joy / To know I'm farther off from Heaven / Than when I was a boy". Indeed so.

Blackheath Market (exterior) Small.jpg
Blackheath Market (exterior) Small.jpg (46.51 KiB) Viewed 11563 times

Blackheath Market, stalls  Small.jpg
Blackheath Market, stalls Small.jpg (54.38 KiB) Viewed 11563 times

17. Blackheath Market, café - small.jpg
17. Blackheath Market, café - small.jpg (48.64 KiB) Viewed 11563 times

The way home to Whiteheath took us both back past the railway station, scene of many later departures. How little it's changed, that booking and parcels office on the bridge. But the smell of anthracite has gone for good.

© Dennis Wood 2010

18. Rowley Regis station booking office, Blackheath - small.jpg
18. Rowley Regis station booking office, Blackheath - small.jpg (48.27 KiB) Viewed 11563 times

Rowley Regis station booking office (interior) small.jpg
Rowley Regis station booking office (interior) small.jpg (50.27 KiB) Viewed 11563 times

20. Rowley Regis station platforms, Blackheath - small.jpg
20. Rowley Regis station platforms, Blackheath - small.jpg (50.14 KiB) Viewed 11563 times
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Re: Black Country Ride No 6 - Whiteheath and Blackheath

Postby BC Wench » Sun Jan 31, 2010 6:42 pm

Brilliant reading Our Den. Reading your stories makes me want to write down my memoirs which I keep putting off.
Researching: PARGETER, BELCHER, BRADLEY, DANDO, ROWLEY, ROWSELL
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Re: Black Country Ride No 6 - Whiteheath and Blackheath

Postby Northern Lass » Sun Jan 31, 2010 7:12 pm

I have to say I love this!
the thirsty village...fabulous
it breathes of its own accord and comes alive in your hands!

thanks you Dennis for giving us this
and
thank you Mally for all the work uploading the photos....lot of work

more please sir!!
xx

when you write your book can I have a signed copy pls
:grin: :wink:
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Re: Black Country Ride No 6 - Whiteheath and Blackheath

Postby Dennis » Sun Jan 31, 2010 7:28 pm

Many thanks - and to Mally for all her sterling work! A signed copy, NL? I'm blushing like a beetroot...
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Re: Black Country Ride No 6 - Whiteheath and Blackheath

Postby Rob » Tue Feb 02, 2010 5:39 pm

Yes well done Dennis .
Your affection for the area comes out in your words.Nice one!!
As a child i used to catch the train from Blackheath every two weeks to The Hawthorns to watch West Brom and even today The Whiteheath Tavern or New Hotel as it used to be called is still my local when i'm in England.The border of Rowley Regis and Oldbury was just up from the pub by the policemans houses just before the old Gate pub if i remember correctly.
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Re: Black Country Ride No 6 - Whiteheath and Blackheath

Postby Annie » Tue Feb 02, 2010 7:54 pm

Thank you again for another lovely journey Dennis well done I really enjoyed reading it, the photo's helped bring it alive having never visited the area. :grin:

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Re: Black Country Ride No 6 - Whiteheath and Blackheath

Postby Dennis » Tue Feb 02, 2010 8:11 pm

Many thanks, Rob and Annie. I'm sure you'll have seen this, but just in case:

http://historyofoldbury.co.uk/WHITEHEAT ... ARM%20.pdf
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Re: Black Country Ride No 6 - Whiteheath and Blackheath

Postby IanD » Tue Mar 02, 2010 1:19 pm

This really is getting close to home .... that rural stile is right next to what was my parents' front-gate for nearly 60 years!!

I think I'd better apologise in advance for what is inevitably going to be an avalanche of nostalgia, please bear with me!

Richards Close was Oldbury's first post-war housing development and I'm pretty sure that there was at least one child in every house. There were children everywhere and never any shortage of someone to play with. I remember flying down ‘The Gulley’ on the back of a snake of older kids on roller skates and being dumped into the road in a sort of sling-shot effect. I don't think there were many cars around in those days but the road had been resurfaced with stone chippings and most of us wore short trousers in those days!!

But 'Our Field' was just over our garden fences and had everything that we could have wished for, including a couple of flat spaces for ball-games, though you had to run the gauntlet from a couple of bolshie geese if you wanted to play at the Titford Lane end ... I think they came from the Waterworks pumping station near what was ‘Raymills’. The flat space outside our house had lush short grass and was regularly used for games of football, cricket and rounders.

As Dennis says, there were three good-sized pools in the field, four if you included the deep water filled hole next to the pit-shaft from Titford Pit. I think that the pool next to our house had been much larger but was partly filled in to make room for the development. However, it still had a few roach and perch in it. Every so often a brave soul would climb over the chestnut fence and clamber down the near vertical sides to fish in the pool beside the pit-shaft. I've no idea if they ever caught anything. The pit-shaft itself was dry and you heard a satisfying series of crashes as a brick ricocheted off the side walls on the way down.

The pit-shaft was flanked by a small hill of toccy covered in scrubby grass. But for us kids the important thing is that it was littered with holes of all shapes and sizes, a ready-made adventure playground. I remember being really envious when Peter ‘Spud’ Taylor (I think that Rob was at school with Peter??) managed to build a den by putting a flat roof over one of these holes and camouflaging it with dried grass, far superior to anything than I ever managed!!

I’ve sometimes wondered where all those holes came from. The answer (I think) came out of the blue a couple of years ago. In ‘Whiteheath and Lion Farm – A Century of Memories’, Betty Worley talks about the fact that they went coal-picking on the field in the ‘40s to help make ends meet. So I guess we have to thank an army of coal-pickers for our adventure playground. By the way, the book is available for free download at
http://historyofoldbury.co.uk/WHITEHEAT ... ARM%20.pdf

But the field was also bordered by two arms of the Titford Canal and, of course, by Titford Pool. The Pool was surrounded by tall trees and bushes, including roses, lilac and rhododendrons that were probably left over from the years from 1900 onwards when the area around the pool had been a ‘pleasure ground’. There was nearly always a rope swing hanging from one of the tall trees so that you could swing out over the water. We usually built our dens in or under the bushes here and occasionally they were trashed … vandalism that was always blamed on those dreaded Blackbatters!!

The Portway branch of the canal was very shallow on the Field side … barges headed for Birchley Rolling Mills and Pratt’s Brickyard stuck to the opposite bank … and shelved gently so it was safe for paddling and we built at least a couple of rafts down there

There’s a good photo of ‘Our Field’ on Page 49 of ‘Making & Moving in Langley’ . It shows a view from Jarvis Bridge across the Titford Canal and Pool with Richards Close in the background. I think that this dates from after the hill was bulldozed and the pit-shaft filled in. I’m pretty sure that we couldn’t see Jarvis Bridge or Ham Baker’s foundry from our house initially. ‘Moving & Making in Langley’ is available for free download at
http://historyofoldbury.co.uk/MAKING%20 ... ANGLEY.pdf

It’s a mammoth work packed with great photographs and maps including a lot about the Titford Canal and Pool. I can’t recommend it too highly.

During this period (the ‘70s), the canal went through a renaissance and at least two narrow-boat rallies were held on the Pool. I went to one of them and have still got a very battered souvenir Black Country mug that I bought from one of the trade stands.

So then, why hasn’t Dennis included a photograph of Titford Pool in his ‘Ride’?? Who can blame him? The M5 was built on a viaduct over ‘our’ end of Titford Pool and little, if any, thought was given to its appearance when viewed from Richards Close. Those of you with strong constitutions might risk googling ‘M5 Titford Pool’. The views from Jarvis Bridge and the Causeway Green arm of the canal look quite reasonable but ‘our’ side of the viaduct does not!!

I guess the current occupants of Richards Close can thank the Urban Forest for hiding this eyesore. Unfortunately, it also hid long views to the Catholic Church and water tower near the Warley Odeon, Barnford Park and my old school in Moat Road. I often idled away time watching local trains headed for the Severn Valley and beyond and long trains of petrol wagons labouring up the bank towards the massive Shell-Mex depot in Cakemore (long gone).

But I can’t help feeling that the local community could have been better served if the planners had looked back at what ‘Our Field’ gave us all those years ago !!

Given all of this, I was bemused to find a web advert for a new housing development in Brades Village. A key attraction of the surrounding area is described as ‘that famed local beauty spot …….. Titford Pool’!!!!
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Re: Black Country Ride No 6 - Whiteheath and Blackheath

Postby Dennis » Tue Mar 02, 2010 3:50 pm

Very many thanks, Ian. Its reassuring to know that I didnt just dream it all - you were there too!

I was told that Richards Close was actually dug by German prisoners of war, part of the unbuilt section of the street near your house projected out into the field as a wide trench. There was a plough half buried in the ground which we used to play on, behind the New Hotel and off the Gulley, perhaps it had belonged to Richards Farm, Whiteheath. Yes, indeed, dens were an essential part of growing up before Health and Safety, and we'd better not mention the camp fires... The open and flooded part of Titford Colliery with the steep sides was full of fish, I think it had been surreptitiously stocked over the years, I remember the older boys moving a bucketful of roach or chub they'd caught over to Titford Pool. There were shoals of large newts in there too. It's miraculous that nobody drowned or fell down the terrifyingly deep open shaft next to it. You'll remember when it was all bulldozed and filled with earth. I fully expected both machine and driver to be swallowed up.

I have a couple of photos of a canal rally in about 1981, the trees on the island were lopped and for a brief moment the field and lake came alive again. Even getting near Titford Pool now demands special jungle training, let alone getting a decent picture of it... As you say, the long views were once superb towards St Hubert's and Barnford Park, it must feel rather like Cabin in the Clearing now...
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Re: Black Country Ride No 6 - Whiteheath and Blackheath

Postby Rob » Tue Mar 02, 2010 4:28 pm

Is there any more reassuring emotion for ex-pats than nostalgia?
Brilliant stuff IanD and i'm still waiting for some class photos of Good Shepherd to be put on here!!
My Dad in his later years could always be found most evenings between 9 and 10 in The New Hotel Blackheath.
That's where i would pop in when on my visits to England and one evening who should come in and join us at out table? Spud Taylor!! Hasn't changed a bit!! His red hair now grey but other than that still the same.ll
I'm sure that plough that Denis mentions is still there or it was till recently.I'll check when i finally go again( oh my new passport came today registered letter from the British Consulate in Paris but tht's another story). :oops:
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