Levelling up ... the pit mounds consigned to history
IN the years before and after the Second World War, huge efforts were made in Black Country towns to clear away substandard Victorian housing, and replace it with something more modern, inviting, and above all, conducive to healthy living.
And that didn’t only mean knocking down the slums and building afresh on the same spot, it also meant finding new sites for the council estates that would be required to keep pace with the expanding population.
And here, thanks to historian Ian Bott, and a booklet of his which we took a look at earlier in the year, are some more photographs from the time when the old Borough of
Wednesbury was getting stuck into its own Municipal Borough Housing Scheme.
Land
The 2,000th house in the scheme was officially opened in Crankhall Lane on September 26, 1935, but the photographs here were taken less than two years earlier, in January 1934, when land was being reclaimed ready for building. At Dangerfield Lane and Old Park Road, a total of fifty acres was being prepared, which required the removal of a quarter of a million tons of pit mound spoil, and the filling in of hollows in a massive levelling operation – the difference in height from lowest to highest points was seventy feet.
After a wait of a few months for the newly-sculpted land to settle, roads, sewers and pipework were laid, followed by the erection of houses. They were built in pairs, each sharing a concrete raft, to guard against any further settling.
Also shown, at left, are some of the leading figures behind the project. With their bow ties, wing collars and waxed moustaches, they were very much men of their time.