Colley Gate, Cradley
A Vale and a brook and a meadow linked to a Hill via a Holloway leading to gates and lanes and a river, with bridge and port not far away. Amongst orchards with apples, pears, plums, damsons, cherries, grapes (yes, grapes)and one apricot. Dogs and cats and chickens, ducks, pigeons, canaries, budgies, finches, roaming and flying. Butchers and barbers and cobblers. Pubs and clubs and chapels and churches, football, cricket and bowls.
Families, high and low and all in between at factories of cloth, glass, metal, wood. There was a bank, a wool shop, a toy shop, an abattoir. Chip shops, shoe shops, grocery shops and, a co-op.
Newsagents, newspaper delivery, milk,bread and groceries to the doorstep, beer at home, off licences.
The MEB.
Ragged schools, Church school, council schools, secondary school, a clinic, dentist, doctors. Police station, police houses, policemen.
Foundries, chain-works, coal-mine, drinking men, ‘Sons of Rest’, ‘Darby and Joan’, horticultural society,
The 130 bus.
Parks and gardens and coppice and fields of sheep and peas and cabbages, hedgerows and woodland.
Rabbits, tame and wild.
Dogs, lots of dogs…….
Singing, lots of singing on Saturday night.
Praying at Sunday School, chapel and church, Methodist and Baptist, Unitarian, Wesleyan, C of E. No Catholic.
Push bikes, Motor bikes, cars, lorries, fumes, smog and fog.
Quiet Sundays, church bells, no shopping, newspapers, radio, Sunday dinner beef or lamb.
Colley Gate
Cradley
A world
