I recently stumbled across this forum and was delighted with the interest in Slade Road Roughley as I spent the first 10 years of my life 1942-1952 living in 121 Slade Road. Our house was opposite the pub, if memory serves me right, the Plough and Harrow. I have visited the area several times in recent years and noticed that the pub has expanded taking in the old shoe menders and some old cottages. Below the pub past a few cottages was a small shop and a Baptist church where I went to Sunday School. Each year we celebrated the church`s anniversary where we learnt new hymns and were decked out in new white dresses and shoes (white pumps bought in Tamworth) At the bottom of the hill which to a child seemed very steep, was a garage with a shop which sold home made ice cream that was full of ice crystals . You had to take your own basin and the ice cream was scooped into your dish to take home. Above our house was another shop that was a converted house.
Further up the road was the crossroads with Weeford Road which was the bus terminal for the 102 Midland Red Bus where the drivers had a rest before the return journey to Birmingham. The buses ran every hour. At this crossroads was an orchard and a small wood where we used to play. This whole area is now a modern housing estate as is Weeford Road. We used to catch the bus in the morning to go to school in Mere Green. Each year we would walk with everyone else in the area along Weeford Road to Bassetts Pole to get to Canwell Horse Show which I understand still is exists .The house next door to us used to be owned by the Police and one of the local bobbies lived there with his family. Behind our house was a large field with a big Oak Tree in the middle where the local children used to meet up. The farmer must have been quite fed up with us as we used to trample down the wheat to make dens to hide in because no one could see us if we sat down. Once the wheat was cut the stalks used to be deadly as they cut into our legs as we ran across the field to our meeting place by the Oak Tree. Most of the children were boys but I had a friend, Valerie who was 2 years older than me who lived 2 doors away on the other side of the police house. My other friend was Jackie Hastilow who lived in Weeford Road in some old cottages that lay back from the road. She was 2 years younger than me. Her mother was very kind to me after I lost my own mother when I was 8. My brother , who now lives in Australia and I often reminisce about the things we used to get up to.
I often wonder if our old home has been updated as we had no bathroom as such. There was a back room that doubled up as kitchen, laundry room , dining room and bathroom. The bath had a wooden lid that had to be cleared of our day to day things every Friday when the copper in the corner was heated up to fill the bath when was filled by the bucketful from copper to bath. No luxury of privacy or your own bath water. The toilet was in a porch outside the back door unlike my grandfather in Hillwood Road who had an outhouse down the garden with a bucket under a wooden seat and squares of cut up Evening Mail on string hanging up on a nail. I remember having electric lighting put in about 1948-49. Before that we went to bed by candle light and had gas mantles downstairs. The back room had an old black fireplace that had to be `blacked` every so often with ovens and a spit over the open coal fire. There was a mantelpiece over it with a velvet cover with tassels on it.
I have other memories of our old home but as I do not want to bore everyone with all my memories unless any one is interested. We did move slightly into 20th century with a 12" TV in1951 , Well we did live within spiting distance of the new Sutton Coldfield TV Masts!