Where's Our Spake Gone?

There was standing room only at the public presentation held at Cradley Heath Library marking the end of a exciting oral history project that collected Black Country sayings from local characters living in and about Cradley Heath. 'Where's Our Spake Gone?' set out to capture living memories of how local people spoke in local dialects.

The project avoided getting bogged down with one accent tracing words and phrases commonly used across the Black Country by concentrating on the four towns of Tipton, Cradley Heath, Oldbury and Gornal.

There were performances by Heather Wastie and Billy Spake Mon, and the Little Earthquake group demonstrated 'Yamlet' and how that had shaken up classic Shakespeare script.

What was said to be a new film of Cradley Heath was a simple series of still images put to few local voices with repetitive themes, and not many of them. The film was disappointing and not what local people expected to see.

It was great to see local historian Ron Moss in the audience and MFAA group members were able to meet with Ron at the end of the night. Ron had supplied many of the images used by the project.