Me yed’s spinnin’ an’ I ay even ad a pint yet ...
By GAVIN JONES gjones@blackcountry bugle.co.uk
ASK anyone in and around Dudley for directions to the Glynne Arms and many of them will scratch their heads, even if it does sound vaguely familiar.
However, if you ask for it by its more familiar name, The Crooked House, most of the Black Country could tell you to head for Himley.
Also known colloquially as The Siden House, due to the mining subsid
ence that has pulled it so far out of shape, the pub, still serving today, is one of the area’s most curious buildings.
It may be an old cliché, but it really does make you feel as if you’ve had a few pints just standing in front of the place. And that’s before you’ve gone in through the crazilyleaning front door and tried to walk in a straight line up the passage, which has the feel of a ship listing permanently to the port side.
These photographs, colourised from black and white, were published as a set of postcards in 1904. On the back of each one, it reads, “it is altogether out of the perpendicular, and slanted towards the south end, which is heavily shored up with thick red brick buttresses.
“Some part of the outer wall is buried several feet in the ground. As you walk along the warped floor your head and shoulders lean very palpably across the passage, and to maintain the equilibrium is a matter of the greatest difficulty.
“The clocks on the walls appear to be hanging sideways. A short shelf, one end of which appears to be a foot higher than the other, is absolutely level, while in the Tap Room is a table which, if round marbles are placed at the seemingly lower end, they appear to roll uphill, and fall off with a bump.”