THE OLD CHAPEL, SMETHWICK.

In Black Hearts And Blue Devils, chapter 12 is entitled “One Sunday In Smethwick’, and it introduces us to the Wellings family who have (relatively minor) parts to play in later chapters. The chapter opens with Augustus Wellings attending church with family members. I have picked the “old chapel” – as it was known in my time in Smethwick – because I was born just up the road from it and was christened there. The church itself was consecrated in 1732 and the build was made possible by the generosity of Dorothy Parkes (a rich local. You can find other branches of the Parkes family mentioned in Black Hearts, notably Azariah Parkes of Blackheath, whose character in the book is based on an historical person of that name). In the book, I have described the interior of the church as I remember it as a child. The graveyard I visited during my research, and the gravestones mentioned are all still there. Even the fact of a robin nesting in an old kettle in the grounds I have taken from an episode from my youth when what I reference in the text as being “taken captive by a capricious child” did occur: the culprit (two brothers in fact) had targetted the robin’s eggs but, not being conversant with the egg collecting code, and ignorant as to how to check for an addled egg, having got the eggs home they broke them to reveal partially formed chicks. I can’t remember how I ended up at their home in Londonderry Lane, as I did not know them – I may have gone with a certain Roger Butler, who must have been about eight at the time, two years older than me. But I do remember seeing one half of an egg with a chick still inside, at the bottom of an old sink wherein were living half a dozen sticklebacks, poached from West Smethwick Park, who were nibbling away at this unexpected treat…

But I digress. The ‘old chapel’, also called the ‘old church’ or ‘Smethwick old church’ is the oldest surviving building in Smethwick. That’s not to say that Smethwick did not exist till the eighteenth century, just that it didn’t explode as a town until the coming of the industrial revolution. No, the name derives from the Saxon language, with latest opinion settling on the original meaning as being ‘settlement on the smooth land.’ It was only classed as a small village in the parish of Harborne, till it was made into an urban district in 1894 (5 years after our story); in fact the old chapel church was originally built as a chapel of ease for the parish of St. Peter in Harborne (hence it was never dedicated to any particular saint).

For those of you who are not especially keen on old churches, how about old pubs? The second oldest surviving building in Smethwick is also called the Old Chapel – full title, the Old Chapel Inn (grade 2 listed and first appearing in the records in 1818 as the ‘Hand Of Providence.’). It may not surprise you to learn that I was always more familiar with the pub than with the church of the same name. During the 70s and 80s, on Monday and Wednesday nights, after judo training we would descend en masse to quench the thirsts which we had built up: The 3Ks judo club was one of the strongest outside London at the time. Tho

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