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Original Text (Annotation: EPW035952 / 1145583)
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A horse and two wheeled cart. A young "Old Joe" perhaps. "Old Joe" was a coal merchant who delivered to homes in the Lye and Cradley districts using a horse drawn wooden two wheeled cart. To a child of 10 years of age in 1950 the wheels were enormous. The horse was a proper cart horse, very hairy. Old Joe lived in a cottage near to the brickyard and kept his horse overnight in a field opposite the brickyard, a little further towards Halesowen than the image shows. As he tipped the purchased coal at the kerbside, he didn't use sacks, Joe's coal was probably a little cheaper per hundredweight (112 pounds) than that of other merchants, who delivered using motor lorries and weighed sacks, which they carried onto the property and emptied into the coalhouse. If Joe sourced his coal from Beech Tree colliery, loading his cart at the Hayes, there must have been a weighbridge. Alternatively he could have loaded at Cradley Heath railway Goods Yard, as there was a weighbridge available but not at Corngreaves Goods Yard. Merchants who loaded coal into sacks here had to carry weighing scales on their motor lorries and weigh each sack as they filled it by shovelling coal from the railway wagons. '