Chapter III
On the 'Buzzez'

Stambermill was, of course, on the bus routes from Stourbridge to Lye, 'Th''aze', (The Hayes) Colley Gate, Cradley Heath, Halesowen, Quinton and eventually, Birmingham. Before my time there had been trams on the route - relics of their demise being the 'tram poles' which had once supported the overhead cables, but which now carried street lights. My own my first memories of local transport are of buses, a variety of them, which stopped at 'The Bird'. This was a public house directly opposite my grandparents' house. It's full name was 'The Bird in Hand', but by that it was never known. Most bus conductors simply called "Bird!". In fact there was a time when I was under the impression that I lived at a place called 'Bird', the word 'Stambermill' being so rarely mentioned.

Before the 'Midland Red' acquired a monopoly on the route, there were one or two small companies operating a service with what we would now call 'Mini-Buses'. One firm had its garage in Enville Street, Stourbridge. Another was 'Sammy Johnson's Supreme' coach services with headquarters in Victora Steet, Stourbridge. Their coaches had a drab but distinctive khaki and green livery.

When going by bus to Stourbidge or 'up the Lye', you didn't bother with timetables, you just stood outside 'The Bird' until, within a few minutes, a bus would arrive. This could be a 'Midland Red' or one of the independents.

The latter were exciting, having wooden floor boards, some with gaps through which the road surface could be seen whizzing by, and up through which exhaust fumes at times penetrated. This probably accounts for my mother's association of bus travel with inevitable sickness. This phobia she passed on to us and it took many years before we shook it off.

If a Midland Red came first, one had the luxury of a larger vehicle, but no view of the road. The single fare was one penny from 'The Bird' to Stourbridge for adults and children over 5 alike.

Much later, when we had moved to Stourbridge and I had acquired some awareness of elementary economics, I found that the fare to Lye Church, a mile or so further on, was 2d. and that there was also a return fare to Lye Church of 3d. Being under fourteen I could therefore get a 'half' return for 1½d, and there was nothing to stop me getting off at The Bird, which was short of the distance I had paid for. Adults not knowing about this, and as I had been given 2d. to go to Stambermill and back, I could thus save ½d, per trip. You could buy chocolate for that!

Reaching an age when I was allowed out on my own, Stambermill had its attractions as my grandfather was 'always good for half-a-crown', Aunt Ethel, for tea and cake and occasional gleanings from the Post Office such as 'stamp-waste' which, in the days before adhesive tape, came in handy for lots of jobs.

To go to Stambermill from Stourbridge you could walk, or just go to the Stourbridge bus station where there would always be a bus ready. For all destinations east of Stourbridge everything had to go through Stambermill. The No.120 was for Brum, 235 for Cradley Heath and I believe there was a 240 for Cradley Heath by another route.

Until the 'Midland Red' ('O. C. Power - Traffic Manager) acquired some ground on the east side of the railway sation, all buses going east from Stourbridge had to be single-deckers as the bridge carrying the railway from the Town Station to the Gasworks was too low for double-deckers. You got on the bus and waited.

Within a few minutes, the conductor would arrive in blue uniform, equipped with a largish black metal box, a way-bill on a metal clip board, a ticket holder consisting of a piece of wood on both sides of which were miniature mouse-trap springs holding a variety of tickets. (1d. white, 1½d yellow, 2d. red - and so on) and a ticket punch with bell on a strap over his shoulder. The latter was made by 'The Bell-Punch Company, London'. The bell sounded when the ticket was punched and the index moved up a notch. This assured the passenger that payment had been recorded and that the conductor had not pocketed the cash. (Not a lot of passengers knew this, but I knew the son of a bus conductor!)

Some of this paraphernalia would be put on the luggage rack together with a white enamelled combined jug and cup which would hold tea at some stage of the journey.

The driver, meantime, and in brown uniform, would be swinging a handle to start the engine - 'self starters' only became necessary when diesel engines arrived. The conductor having assured himself that there were no last minute potential passengers, pulled the leather bell cord twice, the clutch was let in and off we went, diving under the railway bridge at a terrifying angle.

To the accompaniment of a non-electric Klaxon which sounded like a donkey with laryngitis, we swung round past St. John's School on the left and Jabez (1 Chr. 4.9) Attwood's foundry on the right into Birmingham Street. Immediately there was another foundry on the left, opposite which was the 'Hole in the Wall', a pub being a vital parasite of any foundry. This was one of the many pubs which lined the road to 'Brum.' After a row of miserable terraced cottages, the road widened out and we passed the 'Ice House' on the left, with a footbridge over the river, followed by the 'Railway Tavern'. Ruffords's Brick Works and its chimney stack were prominent on the right. The site is now the Stepping Stones housing estate.

On the left, after the Railway Tavern were some fields before a railway embankment. Through this embankment was a small tunnel known locally as 'The Murdering Tunnel', there having been a 'breach of the peace' committed there at some time.

The view was at this point dominated by the blue-brick railway viaduct which carried the Wolverhampton line over the road and over the River Stour whose waters, turned to khaki by effluent from every factory downstream from Halesowen, lay on our left.

The railway line was assumed to be the boundary of Stambermill. The fields on the left after the viaduct were known as 'Clatterbach' - don't ask me why. Cows could sometimes be seen in them and it is believed that these were the source of Fanny Edwards' supply which was delivered locally morning and evening from churns pushed in a modified pram. In a house just after the viaduct lived the 'Boddy' family, one daughter of which was curiously christened 'Annie'.

We then came to the junction where Bagley Street diverted at 45 degrees to the left, at which the bus stopped, the conductor called out 'Bird!' and we got off if visiting the family 'seat'. Opposite the Bagley Street junction was another road, Hungary Hill, which led up to the Junction fields, New Farm and the 'Burnthouse', now covered with housing. Having shed the illusion that 'Hungary Hill' was named after a bloke named Hill who had a prodigious appetite - probably one of Aunt Ethel's ideas - we learnt that it was named after Hungarian refugees who had settled in the district and started the Stourbridge glass industry which flourishes still.

The main road then dropped down to run underneath yet another railway line, that from Stourbridge to Birmingham. Just before this bridge was another pub, the 'Hart in Hand', regarded even by my tee-total family as being rather inferior to 'The Bird'.

It was long afterwards that I discovered what a 'hart' was, (something that pants for cooling streams) until then wondering why a major organ of the human body..... ?

The other pub was in Bagley Street - its name I cannot recall, but it still, I believe, holds 'Black Country Evenings' with traditional 'Faggits 'n Pays'.

Opposite the 'Hart' were one or two scruffy shops, one of which had been the Post Office before Aunt Ethel took over. One of them was a sort of general store famed for selling such things as gob-stoppers and kali-suckers in which, as we were like Alan Bennet's family and 'not like other people', our family did not indulge.

Local legend had it that this shop was once kept by 'Ode 'ooman Lashford' whose specialty was rice pudding, made so thick that it could be sold in 'sticks' - chunks hacked out of a large rectangular pan.

Legend also has it that one day a chimney sweep came into the shop asking for a stick of rice pudding. There being a temporary dearth of wrapping paper, it is said that "'er gid it 'im in 'is fist". Whether that is true, or whether it was a tale told to justify our avoidance of the shop on grounds of hygiene, is a matter for speculation.

On the other side of this railway bridge was St. Mark's Parish Church at which my mother and aunts were confirmed after the tutelage of the formidable Revd. A. G. Lewis before whom every knee did bow. My parents and all my aunts were married there, and I can recall being at the marriage of my youngest aunt, Vera, who married Bert Barlow of 'H. Barlow & Sons, Provision Merchants, Lye.'

Beyond St. Mark's, Stambermill merged into Lye. On the corner of Cemetery Road was the engineering works of G. Higgins, whose offspring, G. R. Higgins was a contemporary and friend of mine and who went on to do Mechanical Engineering at Birmingham University but who has since disappeared from sight.

Further into Lye, past the football ground on the right, was the rather grand red-brick house and surgery of Dr. Derby, mentioned above. On the left was the jeweller's shop owned by 'Alfred Morris, Jeweller, Lye' whose son 'Teddy' trained with my father in the Army and went on to become Archbishop of Wales. A pendulum clock, bought from Morris's when we moved to Stourbidge in 1926, still hangs on my wall and is still ticking.

So one came to Lye Cross, past the house of Dr. Hardwicke, father of Sir Cedric, and further distinguished on one corner by the Gents' Outfitters owned by one Elisha Cartwright. Here my brother, having at last acquired more or less static dimensions, was measured for his first bespoke suit. The discovery that his vital statistics were "28-28-28" caused some amusement since he was not obviously cylindrical.

If you were going 'all, the way' to Brum you passed Lye Church, 'Th''aze', Colley Gate, where at a small newsagent's the enamel tea can would be filled by arrangement. Then came the 'Round of Beef', The Alexandra, Halesowen, up Mucklow Hill to the 'Stag' at Quinton. After the 'Stag', the Midland Red buses were not allowed to pick up passengers and so compete for local traffic with Birmingham Corporation Transport, so we got a move on after that, often skipping past the Holly-Bush, Warley Odeon and so to Bearwood. The next 'pub' stop was the 'Ivy Bush' (Holly & Ivy ?) and so into 'Brum'.

The whole trip cost you 1 shilling, (a white ticket with blue stripes) or sixpence if you were under 14. At New Street Station you could buy for 6d. a foolscap sized L.M.S. timetable, over an inch thick and containing maps of the complete system. For another 6d. you could have a cup of tea and a bun in the Refreshment Room and then get the bus home. I still have the maps. Happy days !

Extract from a letter:

I regret that I never kept the assortment of Midland Red timetables which I used to treasure. There were six or so of them covering various areas in the midlands. I also had a copy of the Fare Tables which then were "classified" information. I obtained a copy of the latter through one Tetstall whom you may remember. (an odd lad !) His father worked for the Midland Red in some capacity. Through him also I was able to break the code of the small hemispherical indicators which were attached to the back of the buses to indicate the garage to which they belonged. Stourbridge was red with a white diagonal cross, Worcester was blue with a white diagonal, Wolverhampton was plain blue. Some of the others were Leicester, Nuneaton, Tamworth (green), Swadlincote, Hart's Hill, Shrewsbury and I am sure some others.

Seeing a bus which was 'well off its beat' was an occasion of great joy. It was a useful education in local geography. You may well be right about the bus number to Brum being 130. I believe that I quoted it as 120. Kinver was 250, Wolverhampton 882, Bromsgrove 318, Clent 319 (to the 'Fountain'),* Kidderminster 311, all of which agree with you. Originally, Stourbridge to Worcester was 315 or 316 according to route via Hagley or Norton. Then these routes were extended to run through to Wednesbury, when the numbers were changed to 345 or 346 respectively. The route from Birmingham to Malvern Wells, via Worcester was number 144. Over the years I have had occasion to travel some of this route by car, and have found myself thinking not of the road number but as 'route 144'.

I'm afraid that I cannot with any certainty remember others. I do recall that routes starting from Birmingham started with the figure 1, e.g. 130, those from Stourbridge with 25, e.g. 250, those from Worcester with a 4 (to Hereford was 410 I think), and from Shrewsbury with a 9. - which doesn't get us very far. 

I don't suppose you remember the trams which used to run from the 'Fish' at Amblecote to Kinver. I once went on one as a special treat.

John.

*There was an old revival hymn which started, "Drinking at the fountain on the way to heaven" This, my Aunt Lily parodied as "Drinking at the Fountain on the way to Clent". Not exactly what one would expect from an Aunt of that era, but it probably runs in the family !