There were two garages, both along Wolverhampton Road � Harper's and Brindley's. Harper's was there first. Just before you get to the Elliotts Lane Crossing there was a little entrance with a petrol pump. The house was sideways onto the road and you drove round to the back to have repairs done.
CHAPEL
Chapel Lane had a chapel, Trinity Free Church, on the corner and a cottage on the right hand side and really nothing else. I remember going to children's concerts there in about 1920. I used to walk down from Codsall Wood and I was only about seven or eight at the time. When I was 12 my mother told me that I was going to join Mrs White's Young People's Class at the Chapel. Mrs White realised that there was nothing for the youth to do, so she formed a group which met at 10 o'clock on Sunday mornings before Morning Chapel.
Sometimes we had a prayer reading and a little Address and then about once a month one of the members would give a little talk. We used to have socials in the winter and we had a tennis club behind Codsall Supply. There was a field there and we were told that we could have part of it to make a tennis court, so we had to make it ourselves. We had a nice little pavilion as well.
Mrs White, the class leader, was a very remarkable lady who had been a school teacher. She had an interest in Christian Science and was a great believer in 'mind over matter'. Mr White was Head Gardener for Major Thompson at the Terrace, Oaken. Their passion was for begonias, grown in special glasshouses and winning prizes at local flower shows.
NURSERIES AND SMALL-HOLDINGS - BAKER'S NURSERY
Baker's Nursery extended almost to the Moatbrook behind the houses on the right side of
Wood Road going away from the village. There were iron railings right down Wood Road. Some of them are still there. A small hedge ran round the boundary from the Square and there was a driveway in at that point, with a lodge at the gateway.
What is now Russell House was the residence of the Bakers. At the back was a warehouse. They must have employed about 100 people. They rang a bell which was on the building so that people working some way off in the nursery would know if it was time for them to stop work. When it was time to go home the Square would be full of people. Bakers
produced their own seed packets of course and they had a shop in Wolverhampton.
Specialists worked there producing the Russell lupins, the Bishop delphiniums and Michaelmas daisies. They used to win a great many awards at the shows. Mr Bishop, who
developed the delphiniums, lived in Lansdowne Avenue. They also did landscape gardening and rockery work � the park at Colwyn Bay and a public park at Coseley were designed by Bakers. There were nurseries where Queens Gardens are now. They brought Shasta
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