Black Country Living Museum is currently calling out for memories of Marsh & Baxter’s butchers’ shop that once occupied 70 Brierley High Street between the 1940s and 1960s.

The Museum plans to recreate the company’s very first shop in their new town centre deveopment as part of the ambitious new development project; 'Forging Ahead'.

Once a well-known Midlands butchers, the company had over 50 shops throughout the region and ran popular advertising campaigns. One of the most memorable featured a picture of a prize pig who drew “his own conclusions” and stated that Marsh & Baxter sausages were “the world’s best sausages”.

Marsh & Baxter’s in Brierley Hill was sold off in 1978 when the factory that produced the pork was closed in the same year.

The shop itself will be set in the early 1950s, a time when meat was still rationed. Visitors the Museum will be able to learn about rationing and how it impacted locals as well as the history of the firm and food production in the Black Country. There are also plans to allow visitors to try freshly made pork pies and faggots.

The Museum is now calling out for memories of this branch of Marsh & Baxter to help them recreate it both inside and out. Did you or anyone in your family work in a branch of Marsh & Baxter? Did you shop there in the 1950s?

You can contact the team by emailing collections@bclm.com or calling 0121 557 9643.

The £23m project 'BCLM: Forging Ahead' forms Phase One of the Museum’s 40 year Masterplan and will see the Museum expand by a third by 2022, transforming the site with a new major historic development focused on the period 1940s-1960s and improved visitor facilities.