Through the artist's eye to see history
Historian and artist Horace Wilson has produced a fascinating array of books and drawings relating to people and buildings.
And the remarkable 90-year-old is particularly proud of volumes on Cakemore born artist and Belbroughton schoolmaster David Parkes and his brother-in-law Allen Everitt.
In his early drawings, Parkes sketched many places of interest from churches to houses, including Belbroughton, Hagley, Rowley and St Kenelm's Church and Clent.
Most of these have been preserved in the history of his life compiled by Horace who also includes a family tree at the end.
Everitt similarly sketched and drew buildings in the area including an image of St John's Church on Queensway, Halesowen in 1845.
He had earlier started one of the largest exhibition centres of the time in Birmingham in New Street and Union Street.
Despite his advancing years Horace travelled as far as Stratford and Birmingham to chronicle the work of the two artists.
A back room of the former navy man's home in Dale Road, Halesowen acts as a shrine to the work of artists who produced images of the area.
Sketches
He also has many of his own sketches there as well, with some of them reproduced in the book on Parkes, and others in more than 20 published volumes of his own.
Horace said: "Parkes' work has remained of great importance as it gives a detailed picture, both visually and in words, of what places and people of the time were like.
"Everitt was related through marriage and although a lot of his work was done in Shropshire there are also some important images of the area around Halesowen.
"I have always been a keen artist and this research has given me the chance to see how people of the 19th century saw what was a radically different area then."
He is currently working on a book chronicling the bygone farms of Hurst Green to be published next year.