Description:Two men standing in the doorway of the Glynne Arms, also known as the Crooked House. Above the door the licencee's sign states that the publican at the time was Sarah A. Glaze and that the house served 'Fine, Home Brewd Ales'.
The reverse of the postcard is printed with an extract from T. P.'s Weekly dated June 17th 1904:
"On the estate of Earl Dudley, at Himley, there is a very curious habitation known as 'The Crooked House'. It is a red brick building with a wide passage right through, leading to back premises. It is altogether out of the perpendicular, and slanted towards the south end, which is heavily shored up with thick red brick buttresses. Some part of the outer wall is buried several feet in the ground. These peculiarities are the result of mining operations-the under-stratum of the earth in these parts being completely "honeycombed".
It is as difficult to walk steadily through the doorway as to pace the deck of a vessel in a rolling sea. As you walk along the warped floor your head and shoulders lean very palpably across the passage, and to maintain the equilibrium is a matter of the greatest difficulty. The rooms of the house are equally out of joint, and present some remarkable optical illusions.
The clocks on the walls, although absolutely perpendicular, as their pendulums testify, appear to be hanging side-ways at a very pronounced angle. A short glass shelf, one end of which appears to be a foot higher than the other, proves to be absolutely level; while in the tap room, is a table which is apparently slanting, but on which if round marbles are placed at the seemingly lower end they roll to all appearance uphill to the top of the table, and fall over with a bump. These do not exhaust the remarkable features of this curious tenement, but those quoted fully justify its title to the name of " The Crooked House."
Sarah Ann Glaze held the licence of the pub in 1899 and purchased it in 1927. Her son George ran the pub from around 1925 up to the point when it was sold to Wolverhampton brewers Johnson & Phipps in 1940. At the time of the publication of this postcard, the public house was officially known as the Glynne Arms'but commonly referred to as the Crooked House or Siden House, local dialect for something crooked or which had settled or sunk (as in subsidence).
Built as a farmhouse about 1765 and converted to a public house about 1830, it is situated near to Himley Wood collieries and was undermined and consequentially subsided at one end in the mid-19th century. This led to the building gradually listing by about 15 degrees giving rise to its nickname and fame. The building was condemned and threatened with demolition in the 1940s but was reprieved after existing buttresses were further strengthened. In 1957 the owners the Wolverhampton & Dudley Brewery. spent £10,000 on repairs to make it safe. A 1986 fire damaged the upper floor and roof but this was repaired by the Brewery costing £360,000. In early 2023, owners Marston's put the public house, by then officially called The Crooked House, up for sale and it was purchased by private buyers in July 2023. Less than two weeks later it was devastated by fire and completely demolished two days afterwards .
This postcard was published in 1905 by George E. Lee of Horseley Fields,Wolverhampton in his 'Wulfruna Series' and posted in Cookham Rise near Maidenhead in 1905.