Hackwood's work is not yet finished
Which of these pictures is typical of the Black Country ?

 

--- says Colin Cross ---

Here is a stretch of land by Neachells-lane, which is scheduled as Wednesfield's "green belt." Can it be salvaged ?

Two generation's ago Brunswick Park, Wednesbury, was waste land. Now it is a cultivated park

Both were taken on the sites of old mine workings, where the soil is rotten with "tocky dirt," where the land sinks to artificial valleys through subsidence, and rises to the artificial hillocks of slag heaps.

One was taken on land east of Neachells-lane which is scheduled as a "green belt" for Wednesfield. The other is of Brunswick Park, Wednesbury, which at the end of the last century was constructed over disused collieries. Brunswick Park was established mainly by the agitation of [Frederick] William Hackwood.

The Wedensfield colliery workings are a dismal sight. They are partly flooded ; vegetation is sparse. They are like a desert, stretching for acres over what was once a fair portion of the English countryside.

In Brunswick Park, 60 years ago, there was only one tree. The rest of the land was a derelict as that at Wednesfield. Hard work by successive generations of park officials has turned the wilderness into an oasis.

Says Mr. T.A. Peacock, surveyor to Wednesfield Council : "Provided the Government approves the county development plan, the Neachells-lane land will become a green-belt. It will cost a great deal to make it look decent. Top-soil will have to be imported, it will have to be drained and there will have to be a certain amount of levelling."

When will this come to pass ?

"Not in the forseeable future," says Mr.Peacock.

That disused colliery workings can be cultivated is proved by experience at Wednesbury. Topsoil has been carried into Brunswick Park, and flowers and trees will grow as well there as anywhere else in the Midlands. Chief worry now is pollution from the atmosphere, not from the soil.

"We still have tocky clay," says Mr. A. E. Rhodes, parks superintendent, "but it doesn't trouble us much. The land gives us no special headaches."