please empty your brain below
I haven't been back to Walsall since they withdrew the blue trolleybuses.

Petras409 | 23.03.19 - 8:29 a.m. | #

Boo to the closure of the JKJ Museum. It was the only really interesting thing in Walsall.

D9000 | 23.03.19 - 8:32 a.m. | #

I went to the Walsall art gallery earlier this month and loved it so much I am going back tomorrow, but this time taking my partner.

Despite being an East Londoner I know the West Midlands well but even I was shocked by just how depressed Walsall seemed. It wasn't helped by it being a very cold, wet Sunday. The art gallery gift shop sells Cressida Connolly's book about the Garmans (Epstein's widow's family) which claims that one visitor described it as 'looking like the worst of Ceausecu's Romania, only with fast food outlets'.

I imagine that the council has a difficult job justifying the funding it gives to the art gallery as the scale of local need for council services must be very high. I don't envy them their decision making.

Joan | 23.03.19 - 9:24 a.m. | #

Shortly after the New Art Gallery opened i was up there to photograph the show for its curators.

On parking my scruffy workhorse of a Vauxhall Astra in a nearby municipal carpark, I noticed a pair of scallies doing a major car repair job, surrounded by spares and tools.

I suspect their range of equipment facilitated the theft of my car shortly after. Of more value was my photo lighting kit in the boot.

The experience left me thinking what a desperate place it was with that level of crime that East London had left me unprepared for. Never been back.

the other eric | 23.03.19 - 10:49 a.m. | #

That closed JKJ museum - is there a thief that specialises in the lower half of sash windows? they could be easily nailed/screwed shut from inside as a temporary measure and boarded over.

Still Anon | 23.03.19 - 11:03 a.m. | #

"...which is none too shabby for a town just outside Birmingham.""

A double-take here. On first reading I though you were suggesting that propinquity to Birmingham might be expected to cause shabbiness (but to your surprise shabbiness was avoided).

A better reading would be that somewhere potentially overshadowed by England's second city is to be congratulated on its impressive art collection.

Malcolm | 23.03.19 - 11:21 a.m. | #

The big name paintings you mentioned are part of the Garman Ryan collection given to Walsall in 1973 by Lady Kathleen Epstein, nee Garman who had built up the collection with her friend Sally Ryan.It was initially kept above the Central Library until the purpose built gallery was completed.

The council did consider closing the gallery but the costs of security and conservation would have been just as much.

I hope you enjoyed visiting my home town, DG.

Tony Martin | 23.03.19 - 6:12 p.m. | #

Thanks for this DG. Walsall is not a pretty place, but you are always very fair. This reminds me of your write-up of your trip to Middlesbrough.

As a Black Country boy, I'm saddened by how desperate Walsall town centre has become, along with the centres of all the big towns - Wolverhampton, Dudley and West Brom. Even Stourbridge is on its last legs

It's worth searching online for the closure of Walsall's main police station in 2016, and its current state of vandalised dereliction 3 years later.

Chris P | 23.03.19 - 8:56 p.m. | #

Was HM herself greeted with "Be There Saturday Sweetheart"?

Autolycus | Homepage | 24.03.19 - 8:22 a.m. | #

I remember the follow up one off drama to A Very Peculiar Practice where Dr Dacre has married his Polish girlfriend from the second series and moved to Warsaw.
"This reminds me of [misheard]"
"What do you mean? This is Warsaw"
"No, I said Walsall"

John Styles | 24.03.19 - 8:24 a.m. | #











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