Some history on Wednesbury in the County of Staffordshire

Staffordshire | Wednesbury

More information on Wednesbury to follow. I probably created the page as I had a link to Wednesbury from another page. When building the site it is easier to place links as they crop up rather than go back later on. I realise this is frustrating if you were specifically looking for information on Wednesbury. There is information on Staffordshire dotted around the website - click here for a suitable starting place.

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This photograph possibly shows members of the Batchelor family of Delves Green during the Edwardian period. In the late Victorian period James and Sarah Batchelor worked Brockhurst Farm, a smallholding on the land now occupied by an industrial area not far from the Bescot Stadium. In the Edwardian era widow Sarah Batchelor was living at Delves Green with her three children. This is possibly her sons James and Arthur who both worked as farm labourers. That may be her young grandson in the cart. The young lad, born in 1902, was also named James.

This photograph shows Wednesbury Railway Station just after World War 2. The lettering on the locomotive shows it was part of the rolling stock of the London, Midland and Scottish Railway. The number on the side is 6661. Rail enthusiast John Davenport told me that "this is what was called a 5' 6" Tank, a 2-4-2T classified 1P, from a class of 160 designed by F. W. Webb and built at Crewe between 1890 and 1897 for the London and North Western Railway. This railway was one of the constituent companies which became the LMS at the time of the Grouping on 1st January 1923, and this one must have received the LMS number 6661 at the same time. Some of these engines survived until Nationalisation in 1948 when the LMS became British Railways [London Midland Region]. Most LMS locos would have had the suffix '4' added to their number. None of this class survived into preservation, the last ones being scrapped about 1955. Some of these engines were fitted with equipment to enable push-pull operation. It is possible that 6661 was one of these, but I cannot be sure."

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"You come to Wednesbury and get drunk and spoil this town's record for sobriety. Why don't you stop in Walsall where you belong instead of letting the Chief Constable crew about his town being sober?" The Clerk [Mr. E. E. Brown] made this comment at Wednesbury, yesterday, when Thomas Newman, aged 56, a labourer, a native of Walsall, was bound over for six months for being drunk and disorderly in Holyhead Road, Wednesbury, at 11.10 on Wednesday night."
"Tilt at Walsall "Sobriety"
Birmingham Daily Gazette : January 8th 1938 Page 9