EPW035952 ENGLAND (1931). Mobberley and Perry Brick Works and The Hayes, Lye, 1931

my great grans washing at 7 hill street

Tubs on the tramway.

Standard Gauge wagons awaiting loading.

The lower terminus of the tramway which connected the Hayes with Oldnall Pit and Beech Tree colliery. The tramway was 2 tracks, one for loaded tubs descending, one for empties returning to the Colliery. The tubs were cable hauled. I do not know if the system was gravity operated or if there was a winding house at the Colliery. In the late 1940s Beech Tree Colliery was operated by the National Coal Board and at this time coal was loaded into standard gauge railway wagon at the Hayes and then despatched via sidings to Stourbridge Junction. In 1931 it may be that the whole of the mined coal was consumed in the brick kilns near to the Hayes. There was a third coal mine in the system, the Hayes Colliery which had a tramway descending to the Hayes. Adjacent to Park Lane there were additional railway sidings.

A horse and two wheeled cart. A young "Old Joe" perhaps. "Old Joe" was a coal merchant who delivered to homes in the Lye and Cradley districts using a horse drawn wooden two wheeled cart. To a child of 10 years of age in 1950 the wheels were enormous. The horse was a proper cart horse, very hairy. Old Joe lived in a cottage near to the brickyard and kept his horse overnight in a field opposite the brickyard, a little further towards Halesowen than the image shows. As he tipped the purchased coal at the kerbside, he didn't use sacks, Joe's coal was probably a little cheaper per hundredweight (112 pounds) than that of other merchants, who delivered using motor lorries and weighed sacks, which they carried onto the property and emptied into the coalhouse. If Joe sourced his coal from Beech Tree colliery, loading his cart at the Hayes, there must have been a weighbridge. Alternatively he could have loaded at Cradley Heath railway Goods Yard, as there was a weighbridge available but not at Corngreaves Goods Yard. Merchants who loaded coal into sacks here had to carry weighing scales on their motor lorries and weigh each sack as they filled it by shovelling coal from the railway wagons.

The Hayes

Valley Road School

Lye Railway statio

Hill Street

Park Street

Balds Lane

Brook Street

Attwood Street

Lye Church ( High Street )