Blimey, I thought the pompous self serving councillors at Oldbury had been a one off in their self promotion using a National event , but I was wrong, as it appears that their near neighbours at Rowley Regis were at it too in June 1953!
I have to state that I know less about this short lived dominion than that of Oldbury, but it is important given that at this point in time it encompassed The Rattlechain Brickworks area, and of course by now, the Albright and Wilson toxic waste dump of Rattlechain lagoon. Indeed, we see how rotten a borough it was by virtue of the crooked brickworks Barnett family involvement earlier in the Century as an “urban district”, notably Samuel and then his son William as “local councillors”.
I have acquired another “souvenir brochure” artefact concerning the Coronation of Elizabeth 2nd , this time covering Rowley Regis and it is a Maj macguffin that has been fairly well fingered at nearly 70 years old. This A5 pamphlet weighs in at 40 pages.
We get straight into the Rowley “royalty” before the actual monarch to whom the event relates. 😆
“The opportunity has also been taken to record something about the present-day administration of the borough and its civic regalia.” Yes I bet it was.
😮
This prologue states that this Municipal borough was formed in 1933.
We then get just 8 pages about the principle characters and the ceremony itself at Westminster Abbey. I don’t intend commenting on this, as it is of little interest to myself or this blog, but feel free to click if you are a fan of the Windsors.
And then to the interesting part, and as with Oldbury, the attempted link to the monarchy with the list of the councillors who made up the council. All male except for one Polly Pritchard. Some of these names I have come across in looking at issues in Rattlechain later in the decade, which I will talk about further on in this post.
I’ve scanned the side wards picture right way up.
And enter the bureaucrats, again all men except for the tea lady by a souped-up name.
A picture of the council house is shown. This building was demolished in 2012.
Image from wikipedia.
More expensive phallic regalia is shown on pages 18 and 19. The gavels connection to “masonic orders” is another red flag as to how these boroughs were run.
The centre pages reveal that “loyal and industrious” is the motto of the borough, but I’m not sure where the loyalty is directed to. Perhaps “loyal” to the industrialists who ran the borough for their own ends? There is also a potted history of the area with as usual the only notable statements being about rich families and industrialists.
It is revealed that there was a coronation committee headed by some old bloke Alderman with a resemblance to Albert Tatlock. Bizarrely they think it a good idea to site a children’s play area on top of contaminated land to mark the occasion! On further pages we are told that even this has some connection to a former councillor, such is the symbiotic relationship between those who bought their way into power.
There is the involvement in the affair of The Vono works, as well as others. A masonic lodge also appears to be in on the act, I just wonder how many of the councillors were active members?
The very British idea of street parties and jelly and custard and fun and games appear to be very prominent here.
The event occurred at a time when the monarchy commanded more respect than it does today, but I’m not really sure why. Events would last a whole week, and even an event in Haden Hill Park in July.
This runs neatly into an appreciation of this park building, again named after another singular wealthy family. There’s more info on this if you’re interested HERE.
A history board of the house and park is also on display in the park today.
The booklet is then given over to several advertisements for local trades. No doubt the councillor Shakespeare on the council had some direct connection to the Joseph Shakespeare company.
And to round it off pair of weapons.
Some of the councillors at this time have cropped up in articles and planning matters that I have seen when looking for information about Rattlechain and the wider local area. The civil servant S.G. Wood appears at a meeting in 1961 about The Vono works and their tipping area.
Rattlechain lagoon and its white phosphorus contents itself arrived on the Rowley radar in 1957 in a very interesting article “peril to children”.
Councillor Noah Edward Thorne, speaks out here about the fact that children could cause themselves great harm with a pool filled with white phosphorus waste.
Councillors Edward Wakeman, and Dennis Gilbert (subsequently Alderman), were critical of the smell that rattlechain was causing and which was detrimental to public health in this article from 1958.
But that said, obviously something happened in Rowley Regis to turn a blind eye to this and allow the “quakers” to keep on dumping their poison waste in their borough. Money no doubt changed hands here to buy silence, I have little doubt, or a trouser leg roll up and funny handshake were employed to good effect.
In 1966, the borough of Rowley Regis merged with the boroughs of Oldbury and Smethwick to form the “Warley County Borough”, and became part of Worcestershire.
Eight years later, in 1974, on the formation of the West Midlands Metropolitan county, Warley merged with West Bromwich to form the Sandwell Metropolitan Borough Council. Rowley Regis is now one of its so called “six towns”, and is perhaps best known virally for a single Street in keeping with a tone promoting pomp and circumstance, and also the berks in its charge.
