Black Country Living Museum searching for memories of cast iron houses
A museum has urged families which lived in Dudley's only cast iron houses in the 1950s to get in touch.
Black Country Living Museum has launched the appeal due to it taking down the two homes and relocating them within its new 1940s-1960s town.
And once relocated in the town, which will open in 2022, the museum will use one of the houses to tell stories about family life during the post-war period.
The other semi-detached property will remain in a 1940s setting.
And now the museum has called for anyone who has a connection to the homes, of which there were originally four.
The Tipton Road site already has information on the Vernon and Barnsdall families that lived in two of the houses – but is keen to hear other memories people have.
Families which were connected include the Bimsons, including Vono Company storekeeper Robert Bimson in 1939, the Harleys who ran a butcher's shop in Dudley Arcade, and the Simons Family – including Robert, a head postmaster at Dudley Post Office in 1939.
Two sets of cast iron semi-detached houses were originally built as council housing during the 1920s in Birmingham Road and Ernest Road, near Kates Hill and Burnt Tree.
They were built in response to a housing shortage at the end of the First World War – with square panels from the Eclipse Foundry in Dudley, which were then bolted together.
The homes were found to be more expensive to construct than those made of brick, meaning only two pairs were built.
The houses were occupied until 1987, when they were declared unfit for habitation.
But two of the houses which were taken down were moved to the Black Country Living Museum in 1989, before being rebuilt in the early 1990s.
Anyone who is connected to the cast iron houses is asked to contact the museum's collections team by emailing collections@bclm, or by calling 0121 557 9643.
