Well, they did it. The industrial archeology team visited the site of the old foundry complex where I worked in the late 60s to see if they could find any remaining traces of it. Or is it now just a phantom of the past?
No one who works on the site nowadays has ever heard about it; in most cases they hadn’t been born when it closed in 1974. They work in buildings which occupy the sites of former foundry buildings and workshops but those have been considerably rebuilt, re-roofed and altered over time.
I took Photo 1 below in 1967. The old admin offices are just left of centre with the triangular roofs. To the right of them is the giant shed of No. 3 Foundry. No. 1 Foundry is behind me, No. 2 Foundry is just out of sight on the right.
Photo 2 is the same view in 2025 from ground level, courtesy of Prof Mark Duffield. The houses on the left are the same in each photo. The old structures in the foreground have been demolished. The admin offices have been rebuilt and the building that was No. 3 Foundry is out-of-view behind them. The team reported that it has been subdivided into separate units with their own entrances and, in some cases, built out frontages. The clean lines of No. 3 Foundry no longer exist.
The team commented that taken as a whole, the site provides a typical post-industrial Black Country landscape. “Once a place of productive labour it has been subdivided between various small service and supply businesses – used cars, vehicle hire, recycling, car repairs, body shops, plant and machine hire, etc – and acquired an untidy and rundown aspect.”
An outside wall of the former No 2 Foundry provided the only identifiable, physical remains of the old foundry complex. Photo 3 shows the building in 1973, taken by the Borough Surveyor and courtesy of the Sandwell Archives. Photo 4 (per Prof Duffield) shows the same view today. It has been much altered – re-roofed and rebuilt extensively. However, on the left part of the wall the team could see remnants of the original cladding. While worn and no longer legible, in 2025 this old cladding has what looks like some of the lettering that can be seen in the 1973 photo, displaying the name of the former foundry.
The contrast between Photos 4 and 5 is in some ways both sad and exciting, a potent metaphor for the passage of time and the changing nature of work and community.
Photo 1. No. 3 Foundry is the large shed on right.
Photo 2. Similar view in 2025 from ground level. Houses on left are same as in photo 1.
Photo 3. No 2 Foundry in 1973.
Photo 4. Remains of No. 2 Foundry in 2025.