A look back at some old West Bromwich watering holes
The days when there was a pub on almost every street corner
HERE, from the Bugle collection, is a trio of boozers from old West Brom.
At the top of the page is the Horse and Jockey, which dominated the corner of Lyng Lane and Hall Street. It was pictured on May 16, 1962 – sixty years ago – when it was an M&B house.
Below it is the Friar Park Inn on Crankhall Lane, snapped a year earlier on April 7, 1961, when the pub was in the hands of Darby’s brewery. Founded in 1894 by Charles Darby at Greets Green, the brewery had by this stage become a part of M&B – the
Smethwick giant took over in 1951, picking up more than a hundred Darby’s pubs, but retained the name until 1968. The pub is still serving today, though since the border changes and borough expansions of 1966, it has actually been in Wednesbury. And on the right is the Steam Packet, sitting snugly among Victorian terraces in Spon Lane. This is also pictured in the 1960s, shortly before it, and the houses, were demolished – the pub outlasted its neighbours by a couple of years, until 1971.
The Steam Packet outlasted its neighbours by a couple of years before it too was demolished