A Trifle From Bilston

Wednesday kicked off with a check-up at the dentist - one of the increasingly rare NHS variety. I'd wore the vintage Phool waistcoat on Monday, this time I teamed it with a vintage Phool midi skirt, my Toast cowboy boots and an embroidered and beaded blouse snaffled from Zara for £5 (down from £49.99). 

 I had a huge grin on my face all day after watching the Mercury Prize the previous night and spotting award shortlisters, Yard Act's bassist Ryan wearing the vintage Levis Panatella jacket he'd bought from us at End of the Road (he's the chap in the white tee shirt).

The rest of the day was mainly spent working on eBay and the evening with rum, cola and binge watching Hidden Assets, a Belgian-Irish cop drama that for some reason we'd missed when it was aired on the BBC earlier this year. 

On Thursday I caught the bus over to Bilston, five miles from Walsall, where I'd arranged to meet my fabulous friend Claire, who blogs HERE. The weather was vile and it had been raining incessantly for hours - but that wasn't going to spoil our fun. After a rummage around the charity shops - and successfully ticking off all the items on Claire's shopping list, as well as a few bonus buys - we adjourned for lunch for what was to be my third visit to a branch of Wetherspoons in four days! 

(I pinched the image below off the internet). Bilston's branch of 'Spoons is named after the poet, Sir Henry Newbolt, who was born in Bilston but moved to Walsall and lived in the street adjacent to ours (I blogged about his Blue Plaque HERE).The Henry Newbolt made the national headlines in 2018 when someone brought their horse into the pub. Which, if you've ever spent time in the Black Country, you probably wouldn't be at all surprised by.

We might be raging atheists but we couldn't help but admire the Regency-era St Leonard's Church, built in 1825 although we were distracted by a text which read She's gone!! The car crash that is British politics continues.....

There's been a church here since the reign of Ethelred in AD997. During the reign of Henry VI, a chapel known as St Leonard's Chantry was recorded with Thomas Hecock named as parish priest in 1475. During Henry VIII's Dissolution of the Monasteries, commissioners came to Bilston in 1546 and recommended that the church be closed and the lands seized although the building was never demolished.

The police station is reported to be the only police station in the UK with a moat. It proved useful during WWI when the building was besieged by an angry mob. They were demanding the release of some soldiers who had been arrested for disorderly behaviour whilst on leave from the trenches in France. 

The quirky looking building above was the former Office of Wolverhampton District Electric Tramways Ltd.. built in 1902. The depot was converted for the use of trolley buses between 1928-30 and closed in 1965. To the left you can see the Kandha, the symbol of the Sikh faith, as there's a gurdwara next door. 

The now derelict Bilston School of Art was built in 1897 on Mount Pleasant, Bilston to commemorate the Diamond Jubilee of Queen Victoria. It was designed by town engineer, Captain Wilson, who reputedly based the design very closely on an institution in Glasgow.

The site is for sale with planning consent for developing the land into a housing estate (HERE) - an absolute travesty.

Also on Mount Pleasant, the building that now houses the Bilston Craft Gallery was built by Frederick Harper, a local lock maker, as a fashionable Victorian villa for his family in 1905. By 1918 the premises were occupied by Bilston Girls’ High School, until they moved to a purpose-built school in 1930. Bilston Borough Council then conceived the idea of opening a municipal art gallery and museum on the site, bringing it together with the public library, which was housed in the Town Hall. This plan received a boost in 1937 when Mr William Thompson, originally from Bilston, though then settled in Colwyn Bay, North Wales, donated £1,000 and a collection of around 100 paintings to the new gallery. The combined Gallery and Library opened the same year, and continue to share the premises today. In 1999 Bilston Art Gallery and Museum became Bilston Craft Gallery to bring the best of contemporary craft to the West Midlands, and explore the rich heritage of skilled industrial design and production in the region.

Shamefully, I'd never visited before. 

I pinched this photo from Claire (I hope she doesn't mind). You can read about Claire's trip to Bilston and admire her fabulous photos HERE.

Alongside photographs of our rich - and proudly multicultural - industrial heritage....

...Bilston was the centre of manufacturing for japanned wear and there are some astonishingly beautiful examples on display, the oldest dating back almost three hundred years. You might remember Jon & I finding a fantastic cupboard in a charity shop last year (see HERE)

There's some fabulous pieces of antique metalware, produced by Bilston's Joseph Sankey & Sons & made in the Arts and Crafts aesthetic (not technically Arts and Crafts as they were mass produced in their thousands). I was excited to see a smaller version of the Lizard pattern brass hot water jug, which we'd found in a local charity shop last year (HERE).

Another manufacturing process for which Bilson was renowned was that of bright cut steel, a process popularised by Birmingham's Matthew Boulton in the late 18th Century. Small studs of which were set into metal frames to resemble diamonds, highly fashionable at the time. The biggest customers were the French nobility and, after the revolution, sales declined, recovering after the Napoleonic Wars when Napoleon presented his second wife, Marie Louise with a parure of steel cut jewellery. Check out these Georgian shoe buckles - and the incredible shoes attached to them. 

Maybe you have to be a Black Country girl to appreciate the beauty in our industrial landscape but both Claire & I loved the art on display.

Enamelling was, and is, one of Bilston’s most famous industries and has been present in Bilston since the first half of the 18th Century. Trade remained good until fashions changed – and some have argued that Bilston was producing so much that enamelled wares became commonplace and therefore unfashionable. The trade gradually disappeared during the 19th century.

The majority of these pieces were produced between 1750 - 1790. Sadly I've yet to unearth any Bilston enamel in the local charity shops - although I remember my Grandma having a couple of Georgian patch boxes. One of those frog bonbonnieres (sweet boxes) sold in Christies for £2,500 a couple of years ago!

The inspiration behind my blog title!

Our final visit of the day was a quick peek inside The Greyhound and Punchbowl.

Thought to be built in 1450 as a manor house (with present timber framing dated to prove this), with a John De Mollesley being the first incumbent. When the Commissioners of Henry VIII came to Bilston to enquire into the state of St. Leonard's Church during the Dissolution of the Monasteries (1536-1541), they stayed at the manor house. The house was sold during the English Civil War to John Green, whose son died during the Battle of Worcester. It is traditionally believed that during the 17th century, either Charles I or Charles II visited the manor house.

The manor house was owned by the Green family until 1715 until it was abandoned in around 1774. It is believed to have licenced as a public house named Ye Olde Greyhound in 1793. It eventually fell into disrepair again, until it was restored in 1936 by Messrs. W. Butler & Co. Limited and was renamed The Greyhound and Punchbowl. On 20 June 1952 Historic England designated The Greyhound and Punchbowl as a Grade II listed building. It was last refurbished in 2003 and it has since been placed on the Heritage at Risk Register.

 We did pop inside but it was very much a traditional old mans' boozer and, although not unfriendly, it wasn't very appealing.

I hugged Claire goodbye and boarded the bus back to Walsall, pulling out Artefacts, a copy of the Friends of Birmingham Museums magazine and laughing out loud at the photo-montage by the utterly brilliant Cold War Steve portraying Phil from Eastenders suffering an existential crisis aboard a West Midlands Travel bus (we've all been there) alongside some pre-occupied Pre-Raphaelites (who, like the artist, hailed from Birmingham).  If you're wondering, I'm the girl on the back seat with my nose in a book, taken from Augustus Leopold Egg's The Travelling Companions (1862).

Here's my trifles from Bilston:

A silk & wool jacket by the iconic Irish designer Paul Costelloe (from his 1980s label and not the later diffusion range), a 1960s cheesecloth and filetwork top (a keeper!) and an Indian cotton block printed smock top by Bazaar.

On Friday morning we walked into town for our flu jabs, which, as we're over 50, are free. We were back home within an hour and, as the pharmacist told us that we might feel tired afterwards, we deffed* the swimming and drove to another Black Country town for a spot of charity shopping. 

*Local slang for deferred.

I wore my trusty Monsoon fedora, a Dilli Grey midi dress (eBay), Rawhide suede coat & Libeskind, Berlin boots (both charity shopped) and a vintage velvet Dilli Grey tote bag. We came back staggering under the weight off all our finds which included a pile of posh & brand new European labels generously donated by a high-end boutique which had ceased trading.

 Clockwise from top left: Part Two Danish designed lambswool & angora cocoon cardi (x2);  1980s Brics of Canada gents jumper; B.yu Italian-made cashmere and wool jumper; Woolovers silk & cotton blend cardi; B.yu Danish-design cashmere & merino wool sweater dress; Massimo Dutti Italian-made cashmere blend sweater; Athens tee shirt; Pringle Golf tank top; Danish label For Ever Victorian Gothic blouse; vintage 1980s Clarks leather ankle boots

Vintage 1970s Lerose Match Set teal cord waistcoat; 1970s crochet shawl; 1950s Kilkeen of Northern Ireland cable knit cardi; 1980s House of Fraser waistcoat; Desigual velvet mini skirt; 1970s Iseline, Italy pure wool & leather trim jumper; Oui alpaca wool cardi; Adidas x Rockport sheepskin-lined suede & leather ankle boots; 1980s leather jacket by Snobs.

I don't know the first thing about gemstones, I only know what I like and I couldn't resist these huge, chunky purple glass beads for £2. 

We spent the evening watching British thriller, I Came By, accompanied by lashings of rum. Neither of us felt sleepy after the flu jab and there's still been no negative effects twenty-four hours later, in fact we've both been dashing around like mad this morning. I've got two lines of washing pegged outside and had a mammoth listing session on eBay whist Jon's cooked breakfast and reorganised two of the sheds. 

See you soon!