Walking Home From School

A Memory of Pensnett.

I remember walking to Brierley Hill Grammar school and back home to Pensnett most days, sometimes alone, sometimes with friends. We walked up Mill Street then down the High Street, with Chattin and Hortons, Woolworths to buy gob stoppers, if we had the coupons and the cash, past the Town Hall where the Saturday Night 'hop' was held, past the Odeon and Danilo, down the hill to the end of Bent Street and then the Earl of Dudley's steel works (do you remember the wonderful red sky when the furnace was 'let out' at night?). Sharp left through the railway shunting yard and down the railway line (which ran to the Baggeridge Pits). The line ran along an embankment between the Fens and Middle pools. These were reservoirs to feed the canals. As I walked home to Chapel Street one memorable day I watched an adder give birth to its brood as it lay on the embakment in the sun. The pools and fields were a wonderful adventure playground for local children, and we could search for fosills in the 'Cliffs' which tumbled down into the Middle pool, where in winter we dared each other to walk on the ice, something which we would never let our children or grandchilren do now. There was a ruined cottage by the Fens pool that was covered with beautiful pink rambling roses in summer, which was another place to play. The odd steam train still ran along thie line in the 1950s, throwing out sparks as it went and sometimes setting the embankment on fire.

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