Sketches of Cradley by Colin Homer

Colin Homer has drawn some sketches of Two Gates and Windmill Hill in Cradley and we are pleased to reproduce them here.

We have added a photograph of a snowy Two Gates taken by the late Paul Auden in Winter 1967 from a position outside the Auden Stores, where he lived and which features in one of Colin's sketches (below).

The first of Colin's pictures below is a re-working of this photograph. Paul was instrumental in helping to set up this new Cradley Links web site and was a keen photographer.

There are three other sketches of Two Gates: one of the Old Two Gates Inn and Auden's Stores at one end of Two Gates; one of the Gingerbread Row houses at the other end of Two Gates where the road forks into Foxcote Lane and Oldnall Road, and the grocery shop that once stood between the two; and one of Two Gates Ragged School, also on a snowy evening.

There are two sketches of Windmill Hill, part of the Stourbridge to Halesowen road that runs through this part of Cradley. They are both looking up the hill towards the top, where it becomes Drew's Holloway, the second from a position closer to the top than the first.