From pioneering solar inventions in Cannock to heated neighbourhood disputes over suburban kerbs, 1976 was a year when everyday life across the Black Country and Staffordshire rarely lacked a talking point.
These archive pictures capture a year of summer heatwaves, personal milestones, local campaigns and familiar faces.
Here is a look back at the stories, unusual happenings and everyday moments that shaped life across our towns and villages in 1976.
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33. Waiting for rain on Water Street
Armed with umbrellas and empty buckets, youngsters Lindsy Fisher, Elizabeth Heath, Susan Fisher, Christine Heath, and Sharon Fisher sit hopefully beneath the street sign on Water Street in Chase Terrace, Burntwood, in August 1976. During one of the most punishing droughts in modern British memory, living on an aptly named thoroughfare prompted plenty of good-humoured local banter as families looked skyward for any sign of a downpour to break the relentless heatwave. Do you remember coping with the scorching summer drought or waiting for the rain to return across Staffordshire in August 1976? | Express & Star archive
34. Harnessing solar power in Chadsmoor
Cannock's Tom Leighton carefully oils the delicate components of his bespoke sun-powered piston engine at his home in July 1976. A 74-year-old retired colliery electrical worker living on Moss Road, Chadsmoor, Tom devoted five years to taking the innovative model from drawing board to working prototype. Convinced that solar energy represented the great cheap power source of the future amidst soaring fuel costs, he designed and built the machine purely as a dedicated hobby. Do you remember Tom Leighton's inventive experiments or discussing alternative energy ideas around Cannock during the long, sunny summer of 1976? | Express & Star
35. A welcome helping hand for the WRVS in West Bromwich
A volunteer coordinator welcomes a line-up of newly recruited male volunteers beside a WRVS delivery van in West Bromwich on February 17, 1976. Long reliant on an established team of 40 women to run the essential local Meals on Wheels service, the West Bromwich branch had grappled with a persistent volunteer shortage until nine public-spirited men stepped forward to help deliver hot meals to elderly and vulnerable residents across the town. Did you ever volunteer for the WRVS Meals on Wheels or receive deliveries from the dedicated crew in West Bromwich back in the 1970s? | Express & Star archive
36. A kerbside confrontation in Kingswinford
Actress Pat Stone disputes the removal of a boundary post as Dudley Council workmen and police stand by outside her home in Mount Pleasant, Kingswinford, in August 1976. The dispute flared up after workmen arrived to remove fence posts and replace sloped kerbstones with straight ones in the cul-de-sac backing onto her garden, prompting Mrs Stone to lodge immediate complaints over the legality of their actions. While she insisted she had personally paid for the sloped stones to be installed, the local authority stated they were acting strictly within legal boundaries at the request of a Stourbridge building firm that owned the strip of land. Did you live around Mount Pleasant or follow the dramatic neighbourhood kerb dispute in Kingswinford during the hot summer of 1976? | Express & Star archive