Oak House Museum

Oak House is a late-Elizabethan timber-framed manor house dating from around 1600, one of the best-preserved examples of its type in the West Midlands. The building survives largely intact: the close-studded oak framing, the projecting upper storeys, the small-paned windows, and the interior with its original fireplaces and panelling. It is open to the public as a museum managed by Sandwell Council.

Inside, the rooms have been furnished to reflect different periods of the house's history, from the Elizabethan great hall to the Victorian parlour. The walled garden has been replanted with period-appropriate planting. Oak House sits in a small park of its own in the Trinity Road area, and the contrast between the 400-year-old timbered building and the surrounding West Midlands suburbs is striking.

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A story
Oak House was owned by the Turton family for nearly 200 years, and one of its later occupants, John Turton, became a physician to King George III. The house passed through several hands before being purchased by Alderman Reuben Farley in 1894, who gave it to the town as a museum — the act of a local ironmaster who wanted to preserve something genuinely old in a town being rapidly transformed by industry.

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