Over the course of many years, working both professionally and privately, I've accrued many photographs depicting places and people in the Black Country and beyond that are now changed, or simply gone.
Sometimes a whole area is wiped out by the developers and transformed into a totally different environment (Merry Hill is an obvious example.) In other cases, it is perhaps a simple summer pastime that no longer exists due to an age trend, sociological change or an indifference to historical pattern.
So here's the beginning of an occasional series of snapshots from the not too distant past. Taken for one reason initially, history may now add another dimension to the picture.
Judge for yourself.
Cows graze near Round Oak Steelworks, Brierley Hill, 1976. The site is now the Merry Hill Shopping Centre.
For many people Saturday afternoon means football, at some level or other. I count myself among this baying, bleating, disbelieving, all knowing, ref baiting horde only in as much as I've spent nearly forty years photographing the damned thing.
But apart from four years covering West Brom for the local paper, I have operated at the corrugated tin, Mars Bar, stewed tea and one man with a dog end of the sporting spectrum, due to my choice of employer.
And to be totally honest, the game in question never held a great deal of fascination for me. I often found that my inability to capture the finesse and refined sporting artistry of the players was only matched by their inability to provide exactly the same qualities. Status quo.
But often with such events, the situation and ritual was as important as the kickabout, so spectator watching, cloud watching, and trying to keep warm held much of my attention.
These pictures were taken at Brierley Hill FC, in the 70's, when the club still had a decent following, and before the ground became Asda Superstore.
Flat caps and attitude, Brierley Hill FC supporters, 1976.
Toilets at Brierley Hill FC, with Round Oak Steelworks in the background.
At one end of Brierley Hill Black Country men and women wearing white aprons and wellies made sausages. At the other end Black Country men wearing dirty cotton and denim made steel. And dotted around an assortment of men and women wearing an assortment of things made glass.
This was the tail end of the seventies, and before long the sausages and steel would go, leaving the vestiges of a glass industry to hang in there, while on the horizon the massed armies of consumerism were biding their time, waiting for the inevitable march of change, or something like that.
Either way, Brierley Hill disappeared a little at this time. You could say it changed to keep pace with time, but it certainly ain't coming back.
You could say this change was necessary in order for Brierley Hill to co-exist alongside it's neighbour, the mighty Merry Hill.
You could say the town is on a path of re-juvenation, and once the planners have dotted all the i's and crossed all the t's it should all be tickety – boo.
Personally, I find the new road system to be a strange shape for a car park, I find the increase in stabbings and shootings in the local bars and clubs to be a tad worrying for someone with a young and growing family, I find the mind numbing artless waste of Merry Hill and it's muzak simply an insult to this area's requirements...but then that's just me.
I think there has been a sell out. Which means somebody has made money. Yippee.
And when the dollar lets you down, what will you do next?
Brierley Hill 1976, with Marsh and Baxters and Round Oak Steelworks dominating the skyline.
Phil
www.thesilverimage.co.uk
No comments:
Post a Comment