New Developments
The New 1930’s High Street – The Oldbury Buildings
These four smoke blackened shops from Birmingham Street, Oldbury in the Black Country are important because they are so ordinary. Buildings like this once typified the town but with industrial decline from the 1970s redevelopment resulted in the destruction of old streets, houses and workshops. It created an urgent need to record and preserve the fabric of the old town. It is a story that can be repeated for towns across the Black Country.
In 2005 the Black Country Living Museum arranged the transfer of the derelict block dating to circa 1850-1875 to form part of the ‘Old Birmingham Road’ which is set in the 1930s. The museum undertook its well practised technique of taking down the buildings brick by brick, numbering each one in the process, to ensure an authentic reconstruction. Work began in January 2009 and once the building shell was completed the careful work of fitting the interiors began. As much had been lost, research was carried out to build up a picture of how they might have looked in the lead up to the Second World War.
The buildings comprise:
Humphrey Brothers, Builders and Decorators.
This firm was at 12 Birmingham Street from 1921 until about 1960 although at its peak it also occupied 14 and 16. In the 1930s they sold famous brand names of paint and wall paper but also specialised in fire places. Hartill & Sons, Motorcycle Dealers.
In the 1930s this shop was also occupied by Humphrey Brothers but the premises have been used to reconstruct a typical thirties motorcycle shop based on A. Hartill & Sons of Bilston. The shop window contains a display of locally made motorcycles against a back drop of contemporary advertising material belonging to the Marston Trust.
Alfred Preedy & Sons, Tobacconist.
Two small independent tobacconists occupied this shop up to about 1932 but the premises are presented here as one of the branches of Preedys - well known wholesale and retail tobacconists in the West Midlands established in 1868.
James Gripton, Radio Sales and Repairs.
Radio shops were a new phenomenon of the era: the spread of mains electricity and technical improvements in radio design encouraged a rapid rise in radio ownership in the 1930s. When the Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain, announced that Britain was at war with Germany on the BBC on 3 September 1939, there were nine million licence holders in Britain.
The Domestic Rooms
Walk through the radio shop into the repair shop at the back and then go upstairs to view the living room with its oak dining table and original thirties wall paper. The back room is a bedroom with a floral wall paper typical of the time. Walk through the simple bedroom over the rear of number 16. The front room is set out as a drawing room with original modern style wall paper, a three piece suite and thirties style tiled fireplace. Descend the stairs into the late 1930s kitchen with its electric cooker made locally by Revo of Tipton.
