Uncovering our History: Aunty's Bar Walsall

Despite the fact that homosexuality was still illegal until 1967 (and even then the laws were not equal with heterosexual counterparts), clubs and pubs were open as safe spaces for the community during the 1960s, and The Fountain Inn, AKA Aunty’s Bar in Walsall was one of those safe spaces.

The Fountain Inn, Bott Lane, Walsall (A.H. Price, Walsall Archives)

 As part of Pride Month 2024, Dr Simon Briercliffe, a researcher for the Black Country Living Museum published research into LGBTQ+ spaces in the post-World War Two Black Country, shining a light on several venues including this one in Walsall.

Aunty’s Bar was actually situated in The Fountain Inn, Bott Lane, Walsall, and it gained its name ‘Aunty’s’ from the landlady, Alice Cronin who was known by regulars as ‘Aunty’. Cronin, who was born Alice Born in Walsall in 1889 became a music hall star in Edwardian London alongsider her husband and a pack of performing dogs. After her husband, Richard’s death, she returned to Walsall and took over the pub, The Fountain, that her father ran. In 1940, therefore, Aunty’s Bar was born.

The Walsall Observer reported on 10^th May 1941 that Cronin’s father had passed away. “Well-known for many years as a licensee in Walsall and Birmingham, Mr. John Harry Brown died on Sunday at the home of his daughter, Mrs. Cronin, of the FOUNTAIN INN, Bott Lane, with whom he had resided since he retired about eight years ago. He was in his 79th year, and had been ill for about a month.” [Source: Hitchmough’s Black Country Pubs]

Dr Simon Briercliffe points to Aunty’s as being one of the most important safe spaces for LGBTQ+ people in the West Midlands.

He explains: “Aunty’s became a safe space for gay men and women to meet. Visitors came from all over the region, particularly using the Midland Red bus service, which specialised in routes crossing between local transport jurisdictions, bringing visitors from Birmingham and beyond. Aunty’s remained an unfussy, quiet Black Country pub, but many of the customers were gay men or “lesbians dressed in suits” and remember it as a “real fun place.” Typically, personal details were kept to a minimum and regulars were only known by first name or nickname.

“One of the reasons we know some of the details about this understated meeting place is the investigation following the tragic murder of one of these patrons, David Palmer (or “Welsh Wendy”) in Birmingham in 1964. Alice Cronin spoke fondly of her clients at the inquest: “They were good class boys,” she said; “they were quiet, and I never saw them with any girlfriends. I would sooner have their type of customers than the ‘Mods’ and ‘Rockers’. They caused us no trouble.” Police raided Birmingham’s gay venues in the weeks following the murder, causing many in the community to avoid the established city centre venues completely.”

Contributing to the Gay Birmingham Remembered archive, Keith Campbell shared this story of Aunty’s: "The very first gay bar I went to outside [of] Birmingham was Aunty’s Bar in Walsall. She was an old girl off the music hall, one bar, very small, lesbians dressed in suits, and it was a real fun place, Michael and I used to go there on the Midland Red bus and get the last bus home.”

Aunty’s closed when Alice Cronin retired in 1967, and when she died aged 80 in 1969, the pub was demolished to make space for new housing. It’s history as an LGBTQ+ safe space, however, is still an important part of our history.