Walsall
What to see
You’ll find accounts of places to visit in Walsall in Towns of Two Halves (and of 91 other places: order the book now for £8 from info@townsof2halves.co.uk).
Links to Walsall attractions include:
● New Art Gallery
● Walsall Arboretum
● Walsall Leather Museum
Alternatively neither Birmingham nor Wolverhampton is far away.
Towns of Two Halves extracts:
● “Walsall are known as the Saddlers and the town will be associated with leather for as long as the lasts last. How nearly the nickname might have been different, if the flow of industrial history had followed another course. Walsall could easily have been the Loriners… It sounds like a sitcom that wouldn’t go into a second series.”
● “Aside from saddles there’s a second leathery link with the club. Leather was the material from which footballs were made in the good old days. Walsall had six manufacturers of footballs listed in a trade directory in 1925. When Walsall beat Arsenal in the FA Cup in 1933, the match ball was almost certainly a local product.”
● “For generations, many football grounds were sited in old residential areas of towns. Football was a product of the Victorian era and it matured amid terraced housing of the same vintage. The grounds were often a very snug fit.”
These are taken from the Walsall chapter of Towns of Two Halves, published in 2018. To order a copy, email info@townsof2halves.co.uk.