Fellows Park

This recalls my one and only visit to the old home of Walsall FC on 11th March 1978 to watch the 2-2 draw with Chesterfield. The stadium was demolished in May 1990.

My great great-grandmother Mary Elizabeth Fellows came from the Black Country to Stonebroom, Derbyshire, in 1878 when she was 8 years old. She married Joseph Smith when pregnant with her son, William Edward Fellows-Smith (who became Fellows). Joseph and William died within a month of each other in 1931. Mary died in 1933.

Fellows Park

I once went to a place and time

that drifts only in memories;

in dreams of Black Country

Saturday crowds

and floodlit nights.

Named like me, it was old

when I was young. Where our name

was familiar, when pubs filled

with smoke and hate ran

in silent currents.

I had come from there, before

the concrete was laid, before the

ragged stands were built.

But now my accent jarred,

all around was red and I was blue.

Connections were lost in

a century of exile and change.

The bulldozers moved in, smashed

the glass panes, brought down

everything they had built.

Tim Fellows May 2020