Contrasting images of a post-war town
THESE pictures are taken from the Dudley Official Handbook for 1953 – making them almost seventy years old.
The covers of such books were often pretty drab, but this one, reproduced at top left, exudes the post-war optimism that was often present in fifties design. Brightly painted, it’s a bird’s eye view of the castle and zoo, with, it’s fair to say, a far prettier scene than an actual bird would have taken in. It looks more like a rural village than an industrial town, but certainly looks inviting.
Above right is an advert from the book, which shows the inside of the Scrim works, a clothing factory which once employed dozens of workers, most of them women. Before the Russells Hall Estate was built the area was often known as ‘Russell’ Hall, and that’s the address given by the Scrim and Sanford Manufacturing companies.
The ad descrives the firm as weavers and bleachers of cotton fabrics, and of surgical dressings, and the huge machines on view in that enormous factory hint at the scale of output.
Below right is another scene that will only be familiar to readers of a certain vintage. St Edmunds or Bottom Church is there on the left, with the castle in the centre. But the large traffic island in the foreground is long gone, as it the old Fisher Street bus station, which was once a ring of concrete and glass bus shelters around a central lawn. In the middle distance at left is the old Civic Restaurant.