Fancy dress and fines for not being fined: remembering the Black Country's eccentric 'cork clubs'
These Black Country folk are dressed for football, but actually they're up to fun and games of a different sort.
Being led out of the Rose and Crown pub in Bromley, Brierley Hill, by their chairman Jack Taylor in May 1968 are members of one of the last 'cork clubs' in the region.
Cork clubs were informal clubs in which members who did not follow the wacky rules got fined, with the money being ploughed back into things like club outings or perhaps charitable causes.
Classically, members would be required to carry a cork about their person at all times, and if challenged by another member and unable to produce one, a fine would follow.
