Fancy dress and fines for not being fined: remembering the Black Country's eccentric 'cork clubs'

Cork clubs were informal clubs in which members who did not follow the wacky rules got fined, with the money being ploughed back into things like club outings or perhaps charitable causes.

Classically, members would be required to carry a cork about their person at all times, and if challenged by another member and unable to produce one, a fine would follow.

However as there is no mention of actual corks with the Rose and Crown Cork Club, it seems to have been a variation on the theme by regulars who had taken it upon themselves to revive a bit of nonsense which had died out.

As you can see, here the members are all dressed up in football kit. Villagers in Bromley were used to such spectacles, but motorists passing through would have been surprised to see sights such as a group of men walking along the main road in bowler hats, or sporting Easter bonnets – that sort of thing.

The club's gatherings were at the pub every Sunday lunchtime, and the rules were that the members decided on what attire they would wear each week. Any member who did not wear the particular outfit was fined. Members had to walk to the Rose and Crown in full kit. If they drove there, they had to walk to the telephone box and back.

At the weekly meeting members sat in a circle with a bucket in the middle of the floor, which was for the fines which were from sixpence – 2.5p – upwards.

Virtually every time a member opened his mouth he was fined, and even those who sat quietly could not get away with it, as there were fines for not being fined.

Such clubs seem to have passed into history, although during the building of the M54 motorway in the early 1980s members of one of the contractors' gangs had a "peg club", in which woe betide any of them who were found not to be wearing a clothes peg.