HISTORY Gornal's Lost Pubs

Lost Pub Memories Email Us Here Thanks to Mike Hammond for the following contribution: Just browsing through Beth Moore's Lost Pub Memories page and can put a little more meat on the bones. The pub to which Beth refers to as Eddie O'Neills was in fact the Horse and Jockey, at one time owned by Ansells. Before - I guess - the mid 1960's this was a Free House and was purchased by Ansells Brewery of Aston Cross Birmingham. My father, Bill Hammond was asked by Area Manager, Ron Smith to "caretake" the house, until a Manager was appointed. This he did whilst still running the Bricklayers Arms (Pig on the Wall) further down the road in Kent Street (see also Pig on the Wall postcard legend articles) . As I recall my Father and Mother used to take it in turns to open up and run the pub and very often I would help with the "bottling up" etc. I would have been about 14 or 15 years of age at the time. Strangely enough about 10 years later I was to be a Stocktaker for Ansells Brewery and well remember taking stock at the Horse and Jockey after it had been re-furbished. I seem to remember that it had a very nice little lounge bar, very upmarket for Gornal! Two other lost public houses in Gornal come to mind, the names of which have been haunting me for months, but I have just had their names confirmed to me. These were the Lion and the Royal Oak, both in Kent Street. These two pubs were built right adjacent to each other and were positioned opposite the Shakespeare. One was a Julia Hanson of Dudley pub and the other a Banks's of Wolverhampton house. The two breweries were later to be as one under the Wolverhampton and Dudley Breweries name. I guess that they would have been demolished in the early to mid 1960's, the time of a great deal of redevelopment in Upper Gornal. This was at the time the present Arcade in Upper Gornal was built, and we can surmise that the present Spills Meadow pub was built, (although a little further down the road), to replace these two.