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In the same vein, have a look at this link which shows the loss of the Central Arcade –
http://www.historywebsite.co.uk/lost/centralarcade.htm
Sad that they couldn’t even save that wonderful facade.
Ref the old Royal Hospital, it wouldn’t surprise me to see a property developer buy up the place to turn into luxury apartments or office suites. Taking into account the fact that it’s an extremely attractive building, I don’t think they would have too much trouble selling/renting them either. Anything rather than see the place deteriorate again.
Interesting to see, in the second picture, as one building comes down, another rises in the background. Mander House is still under construction at this time as can be seen by the crane and scaffolding. We lost many of our old buildings for the construction of what I personally look on as an abhorrence on our landscape. As a shopping centre it’s just about acceptable but, a<span class=”entry”><span class=”entry-body”><span class=”runon-head”><span class=”runon-title” title=”Derived word”><span class=”w”>rchitecturally</span></span></span></span></span>, so much more could have been done to meld it into it’s surroundings more sympathetically. The loss of the Star and Garter in Victoria Street and Central Arcade was hard enough to take, but did it have to be replaced with acres of concrete? There are examples of what could have been achieved, with a little imagination, on the Penn Road and Tettenhall Road where the facades of blocks of terraced houses have been kept and new housing built onto the back, thus giving the appearence of well looked after old properties but with all modern facilities available to prospective buyers. All it takes is a little imagination!
OK! Rant over! How do others feel?
I’d put a time of the early 1960’s on the picture Billy. You can just make out a Triumph Vitesse turning into the street. The Vitesse started production in 1962 and ran until 1971. That probably makes this one of the last photos taken of the New Hotel before it was demolished. In fact, looking at the pic more closely, it looks as though the upper windows are already out and the demolition process has already started!
My local was the Penn Cinema on Warstones Road. My early memories are somewhat vague regarding the first film I saw, but the Saturday matinee was the time all the kids off the estate caused their usual weekly chaos, much to the annoyance of the usherettes! I do have memories of the westerns with Tex Ritter, Gene Autry, and of course, Roy Rogers and Trigger. There was also the gangster film serials with “The Black Hand Gang” or something along those lines, along with the Disney classics such as Snow White, Pinocchio, etc.
It was pennies to get in but, if you’d spent your cinema money on “suck”, there was always someone ready to open the side door for a couple of acid drops!
One more possibility , Jonny, is that 37 Cannock Road and Newbridge Terrace are one and the same. Victorian builders loved to give their houses names, usually on a plate inset into the brickwork. This extended to the terraces that they built, as in Mimosa Villas, or Elm Cottages, or other grandiose names, even though they resembled neither a villa, or a cottage!
I’ve just checked the email address on my profile and it is correct, so not sure why you couldn’t make contact.
The census details above are from the 1881 census. By 1891 it seems that, of the children, only Mary, Joseph, Arthur, and Milbra, are still at the family home with their parents. Daughter Mary is a nail cutter, Joseph is a fitter’s labourer, Arthur is an errand boy, and Milbra is a scholar.
The family are still at 37 Cannock Road.So far those are the only two census records I can find in regard to Wolverhampton.
According to records, Aaron married Mary Ann Williams in Wolverhampton in the second quarter (April-June) of 1855. Should you want to get hold of a copy of tis record the numbers you need are Volume 6b Page 586
Aaron died in Wolverhampton in 1900 aged 65
Hi Jonny
So far:-
Name: Arron Owen
Age: 45
Estimated Birth Year: abt 1836
Relationship to Head: Head
Spouse: Mary Owen
Gender: Male
Where born: Droitwich, Worcestershire, England
Civil Parish: Wolverhampton
County/Island: Staffordshire
Country: England
Street address: 37 Cannock Rd
Marital Status: Married
Education:Employment status:
Occupation: Boatman
Registration district: Wolverhampton
Sub registration
Name Age
Arron Owen
45
Mary Owen
44
Mary Owen
17
Milbra Owen
1
John Owen
15
James Owen
12
Richard Owen
9
Arthur Owen
7
Joseph Owen
3Hi Jonny,
According to Black Country History – http://blackcountryhistory.org – there was a Newbridge Terrace, Cannock Road, so Billy’s assumption that the demolished terrace next to the Waggon and Horses was Lansdown Terrace could well be right. Alternatively, it could also have been Newbridge Terrace. Normally one would assume that Newbridge Terrace was in the Newbridge area, but who knows what goes through the minds of town planners!! I’ll see what I can turn up on either Ancestry or RootsChat.
Interesting snippet about John Jones, Billy. Transportation was usually a one way ticket. Even after you’d served your sentence the onus was on the released prisoner to fund their own passage back to Blighty. I wonder if John Jones ever made it back? Good programme on at the moment – Banished. It doesn’t paint a very nice picture of life as a transportee.
Hi Jonny,
I’ve had a look online and the only Lansdown Terrace I can find is on Tettenhall Road.
Have a look at this site – http://www.britishlistedbuildings.co.uk/en-378593-lansdowne-terrace-/map
I coudn’t find North Bridge Street, but there is a Bridge Street in Springfields, just off the Wednesfield Road. On the 1901 OS map for Wolverhampton NE it’s shown as running across the top of Culwell Street and Bagnal Street, and alongside the railway line. This address is close to the Birmingham Canal so could be a possibility.
There’s also a site on the internet called RootsChat which, like Billy’s board, is free to join and there is a section on there for boat people, so that may be worth looking at. The people on there are very friendly and helpful.
If you need any more help feel free to email me. You can find my email address by clicking on my name at the side of this message.
Tony
You’ve got me with this one Billy! Being a mere stripling of 67, this is way before I started going to the “flicks”, and it would have beeen years before I’d have been allowed to see something scary! Having no clue to go on I wouldn’t have any idea where to start researching. Hope someone else has better luck.
I’m guessing that this is possibly one of the more obscure cars built by Guy Motors, or one of Varley-Woods vehicles which were built by Turners. I know Guy Motors dabbled with car manufacture for a time before concentrating on commercial vehicles, and they did have an open tourer out around the early 1920s.
Varley-Woods didn’t have a great deal of success with their models, and I believe they were only in production for about a year.
I’m going for Guy Motors.
When you asked this question, Billy, I thought I’d get my 1901 OS map of Wolverhampton (NE) and Heath Town out and have a quick scan. Guess what? That section is just off the page! Also checked Isaac Taylor’s map of 1750 but that was way too early. Unless I can find something on-line I have to admit to being stumped this time.
Nice picture Billy, but I think the car is a Morris 8 from somewhere around 1936.
There’s one in this picture – if the advert is still there – for £6350!
http://www.carandclassic.co.uk/car/C496600
“I only hope in the near future that when some more enterprising business takes over the building they will move that piece of unattractive facade, to reveal the old public house coat of arms and its frontage in all its glory.”
I’m with you on that, Billy. How anyone can think that the current facia is attractive is beyond me! I used to walk around Wolverhampton looking above street level to get an idea of how the town used to look in the past – before “modernism” reared it’s head.
I’m wondering if this is anything to do with the Dudley Arms that stood in Dudley Street? The Ward family who, through marriage, inherited the title of Lords of Dudley,were resident at Himley Hall until the 1830s. I believe that their coat of arms decorated the front of the buiding in Dudley Street.
Some memories there George! Mention of Billy Wilson brought back memories of his place in Bilston St where, to drum up more trade, he employed a young lady who would cut your hair topless! (She was topless, not your hair!) Some time later he moved to a place next to the Connaught Hotel on Tettenhall Road. His son Mitch, and daughter Tracey, both went into hair dressing and worked with him. Mitch was employed by no less than Duran Duran as their personal hair stylist. Tracey went one better and married one of them!
Being a” baby boomer”, my teenage years were the 60s and 70s. This was a time when some of us found that visiting a hairdresser was quite unnecessary. The locks got longer, the parent’s tempers shorter! Many a time I was threatened with an unscheduled haircut as I slept. Thankfully, the threat was never carried out, and the hair was allowed to flourish (for the time that I had it anyway!). These days, as George mentions, furniture polish would be more appropriate that any of the wonder products marketed by the hair trade. I still have the photos to look at wistfully, but I don’t miss the wolf-whistles – I can’t run very fast these days!
Well, Head over Heels with Jessie Matthews was released in America in February 1937 and the King’s speech, alluded to in some of the adverts, took place on the 12th May in that year, so I’d guess at May 1937 for the date.
Odd one out? The Dale seems to be the only one outside Wolverhampton, but knowing how devious Billy’s questions can be, I suspect that’s too easy!
Now I feel really stupid! I used to work next door to this place in the 1960s at Bates Shoes on Dudley Street and used to use this clock to check whether I was late for work. Did it used to be a branch of Burtons, Billy? It was on the corner where you now walk down to the Mander Centre. What it was in 1951 is another question. (I was only 4yrs old then!!)
My initial thought was Burton’s, but there was also a clock on the corner opposite, so I ruled that one out. The brickwork reminded me of the dairy on Penn Rd, but that was always a dairy, not a tailors! Was there one above Buxton and Bonnet? I can’t remember seeing one! For a wild guess, how about the Red House on the corner of Victoria Street?
Excellent picture Billy. It shows the devastation these explosions cause when things go wrong. With regard to the Lanesfield explosion, the newspaper report states,
“About one-third of the boiler was ripped off and flew off at an angle and, avoiding the canal, falling in a flat mass on the wharf of the Parkfield Company, 150 yards away.”
I suppose it was lucky that only two people were killed in the explosion. The injured were variously stated as between three and twenty.
I have newspaper reports from the Birmingham Daily Post, London Standard, Cheshire Observer, and the Sheffield and Rotherham Independent, so the next stop is Wolverhampton archives to get the report from the Express and Star.
Hello Maxine.
I’ve done a little digging and have come up with the following courtesy of http://www.freebmd.org.uk/
Ernest’s parents were Grace A Whittingham and John A Morgan who married in the last quarter of 1938 in Wolverhampton. It looks as though Ernest had four sisters –
Joan, born 1939, Catherine, born 1940, Maureen, born 1944, and Valerie born 1947
If you need any more help just leave a message here for me
Tony
True Billy, although I was only able to find Enoch’s grave with the help of the people at Holy Trinity as there is no headstone marker.
Infant mortality also took it’s toll on the Elwells, as it did on so many families of that era and, again thanks to some sterling work by the staff at Holy Trinity, I’ve managed to locate two of Enoch’s children. Both sadly preceded him to the great beyond.
All very interesting Billy. I suppose one question would be, “was the Manly Arms around in the mid 1800s?” I suppose it’s possible that Enoch and his family were in “digs” there.
The Elwell family seems to be quite a big one. Bilston, Sedgley, Wolverhampton, and Cheslyn Hay all have them. My own interest is of the Heath Town family of Enoch and Sarah of Wolverhampton Road, Heath Town.
Enoch, my Great, Great-grandfather, came to a particularly horrific end, when a boiler he was working near at the Lanesfield Ironworks exploded, killing him instantly. A newspaper of the time stated that he was “dreadfully burned”. Also killed was one John Shorthouse, the boiler fireman, whose body was “shockingly mutilated”.
Even though the boiler had been examined and found to be “not in a sufficiently good condition for assurance” and that although it was originally designed to work at 32lbs pressure per sq.in. it had been repaired so many times that it was recommended that the pressure should not exceed 20lbs per sq in, it continued to be worked at full capacity. The inquest ruled that the owner, Mr H de Simencourt, was not under any obligation to adhere to the recommendation of the Inspector Midland and Steam Boiler Inspection and Assurance Company, and had simply used his discretion to carry on using the faulty boiler. The jury at the Inquest returned a verdict of “Accidental Death” on the two unfortunate fatalities. I dare say neither family received any form of compensation for their losses. Enoch was only in his early thirties when he died leaving a wife and family to fend for themselves. He is buried in Holy Trinity churchyard.
