Station Road Cottages, Black Country Museum (Scan from 1992)

“These two cottages are replicas of a pair that still stand on Station Road, Oldhill, probably built in 1848, and are typical of workers' housing of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century in the Black Country.

Originally, each house consisted of a single room and pantry downstairs with a single bedroom upstairs. This would have meant extreme overcrowding for large families.

The left hand cottage was extended in the 1860s and the right hand cottage was extended at the turn of the nineteenth century to provide two bedrooms in each cottage.

The cottages are displayed as they would have looked in 1910 when two branches of the Newton family occupied them.

In the left hand cottage lived Edward Newton described as a ‘coal heaver’ with his wife and family. Edward’s brother, Thomas, a nail maker, occupied the right hand cottage. His wife ran a sweetshop from the front room, which now houses the Cobbler’s Shop.”