A pint and a bite round the back of the pub
Our forebears were no strangers to drinking outdoors
WALL Heath has always been at the forefront of technology – for example, I amplify the telephone by leaving it in a galvanised bucket by the kitchen door whenever I am up in what I laughingly call the garden, doing battle with cable lengths of convolvulus root.
Wall Heath ingenuity was exemplified when, as young tearaways without as much as a ‘clet’ with which to purchase a few penn’orths of locust bean chews from Mrs Penny’s shop, old bike frames were retrieved from sheds or hedgerows, fitted with pram wheels and scooted along.
Sacking
Rusty handlebars were bent up, sacking bound around crossbars for a seat, and for Cradley Heath Speedway, read Wall Heath. As a local dragster racer used to put it, ‘we day arf taz!’
On a wall in the bar of that legendary Enville Road public house, The Yew Tree – renowned in pre-war days for licensee Alec Mason’s chrysanths and tomatoes, oh, and Sunday morning ham and egg breakfasts cooked by Mrs Mason and her aide-de-camp, Miss Cooling – well, on that bar room wall the pictures included a copy of the wellknown print of Johnny Walker footing along on an ancient hobby horse or celeripede. You might say such a contraption was an upmarket version of the Wall Heath youngsters’ homemade scooter bikes.
It was in 1840 that Mr Kirkpatrick Macmillan added cranks and pedals; the velocipede or boneshaker came along, then the ‘ordinary’, which we know as the penny farthing, and, with the introduction of the safety models in the 1880s, the opening chapters in the cycling story were written.
I remember a crowd of us locals standing on Holbeach Corner one grey and murky day to watch the bunched riders of the Tour of Britain flash by – there they were, gone!
Sunbeam
But it was along that same A449 that England’s great composer, Edward Elgar, many years before, would pedal on his three-brake Sunbeam all the way from Worcester to see friends at St Peter’s Vicarage in Wolverhampton, and to sometimes watch a football match at the Wolves.
Opposite my house and shop in Enville Road, there is the business of Hayes Cycles. Founded by Chris Hayes forty years ago, and firmly established with Chris both selling and, importantly, repairing cycles for many customers.
Cal, Chris’s very friendly wife, who sadly passed on a while ago, was responsible for keeping all the accounts and books in very good order.
Chris, who previously worked in Kidderminster’s carpet factories and the television trade, has also been a very successful rock and roll drummer – he has told me of a time when he woke his mother up to listen to a late night Luxembourg programme playing a record by a group with whom he was the drumming man. One of his old pals was Led Zeppelin’s drummer, John Bonham.
Lately Chris has not been enjoying good health, but it looks as if the Hayes bike biz should carry on whizzing – or tazzing – along; into the breech has stepped his son, Phil. Along with an ex-school mate, Phil is plugging both sales and service – he used to demonstrate his ability on one-wheeled cycles, so two should be a doddle!
Phil is offering both electric and pedal power, and, after prospecting amongst Chris’s carefully chosen and preserved stock, is able to show some of the rarer ‘retro’ models.
Like his dad, Phil is also an excellent photographer and, like Edward Elgar, a keen appreciator of our wonderful countryside. As a veteran Wall Heath cyclist of years ago, Les Chilton, used to say, ‘You’ll see I you hear anything.’
Certainly you’ll see and hear plenty of Team Hayes.