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Find out more about your ancestor’s home with Streetnames of Stourbridge, a rare title originally published by the Black Country Society ( blackcountrysociety.co.uk) in 1988. Reproduced here in this scanned and digitised PDF edition, normally sold for £4, this is a fascinating source of information. The A-Z survey – starting with Abbey Road and ending with the informally named ‘Z Street’ – contains the derivation and history of every street in and around the area. loriners Matthew Harvey & Co, Walsall Locks and Cart Gear. We have a large collection of trade catalogues illustrating products of leather, locks and many other industries.”
Sandwell’s Community History & Archives Service, which is based at Smethwick Library, also has records of Black Country industry, such as the Patent Shaft Steelworks of Wednesbury, which manufactured aand exported bridges aall over the world aand produced tanks dduring the First WWorld War, and AAccles and Pollock of Oldbury, tube manufacturers who pproduced the first tubular fufurniture and tubular aircraft sections.
Archivist Matt Skidmore says: “Our most renowned business ccollection is Chance Brothers LLimited, which was a leading glass mmanufacturer established in SSmethwick by Robert Lucas CChance in 1824. I should imagine mmost people in the area will be fafamiliar with Chance Brothers’ oornamental glassware but the ccompany was also responsible for supplying the lights and apparatus for hundreds of lighthouses, manufacturing the glass for the Crystal Palace and for reglazing the faces of the Palace of Westminster clock tower that houses Big Ben. The most popular records for researchers are the employment records and the lighthouse order books.”
This year they are celebrating the 50th anniversary of the visit to Smethwick of black rights activist Malcolm X. Archivist Matt
Express & Star,