Brierley Hill
Brierley Hill is a town and electoral ward in the Metropolitan Borough of Dudley, West Midlands, England. It is located south of Dudley and north of Stourbridge. Part of the Black Country and in a heavily industrialised area, it had a population of 13,935 at the 2011 census. It is best known for glass and steel manufacturing, although the industry has declined considerably since the 1970s. One of the largest factories in the area was the Round Oak Steelworks, which closed down and was redeveloped in the 1980s to become the Merry Hill Shopping Centre. Since 2008, Brierley Hill has been designated as the Strategic Town Centre of the Dudley Borough.
Toponymy
The name Brierley Hill derives from the Old English words 'brer', meaning the place where the Briar Rose grew; 'leah', meaning a woodland clearing; and 'hill'.History
Largely a product of the Industrial Revolution, Brierley Hill has a relatively recent history, with the first written records of the town dating back to the 17th century. Originally established as a settlement in the woodland of Pensnett Chase, it began expanding rapidly following the chase's enclosure in 1748; it was first recorded on a map in 1785 after the mapping of the Stourbridge Canal.Brierley Hill had become heavily industrialised by the beginning of the 19th century, with several quarries, collieries, glass works and iron works emerging. Pigot and Co.'s National Commercial Directory for 1828-9 describes Brierley Hill as a hamlet with extensive iron works manufacturing rod, bar and sheet iron, tanks, and boilers.
A National School was opened in the town in 1835 and a market area had developed along the High Street.
By the start of the 20th century, the raw material deposits had become depleted, leading to the closure of many of the industries in the area. The decline in manufacturing resulted in an unemployment rate of 25% in Brierley Hill by the early 1980s, with the closure of the Round Oak Steelworks in December 1982 resulting in a further 1,300 redundancies. The steelworks site, along with the adjacent Merry Hill Farm, were subsequently designated as an Enterprise Zone and were redeveloped to create the Merry Hill Shopping Centre and The Waterfront business park.
In recent years, proposals have been drawn up by the local authority to regenerate Brierley Hill, with the Brierley Hill Regeneration Partnership formed to improve the town over 10 years, by investing in the infrastructure and increasing the number of homes and job opportunities.
With reports starting in 2018, stories of the "Beast of Brierley Hill" began, a local phenomenon based on the findings of numerous tortured and brutally mutilated animal carcasses. Most accounts are anecdotal, describing pets and small livestock being found with highly unnatural injuries like twisted limbs, deep gashes and even evisceration. Due to these highly unnatural circumstances many locals theorise that rather than a wild animal, it is a human performing the killings out of pure cruelty or sadism. The incidents lack any media coverage, photographic evidence or official investigations, making information on the phenomenon difficult to come across, with most known information persisting through word-of-mouth.
Brierley Hill is home to the renowned Bathams brewery on Delph Road.
Civic history
Brierley Hill became a chapelry in the parish of Kingswinford, Staffordshire, on 31 December 1894. It became a separate civil parish, being formed from the part of Kingswinford parish in Brierley Hill urban district, under the Local Government Act 1894; previously, it had been an urban sanitary authority. The urban district expanded greatly in 1934, after taking in most of the Kingswinford and Quarry Bank districts and made a failed bid to obtain borough status in 1952. On 1 April 1966, the district was abolished and merged with the County Borough of Dudley, Seisdon Rural District, Municipal borough of Stourbridge; part also went to form the County Borough of Warley.The parish was also abolished on 1 April 1966 and merged with Dudley and Stourbridge; part also went to form Warley. In 1961, the parish had a population of 56,075. It became part of the Dudley Metropolitan Borough in 1974.
Governance
The town is part of the Dudley Metropolitan Borough, in the West Midlands. The Brierley Hill electoral ward is currently represented by one Labour councillor, Matthew Cook, and two Conservative councillors, Adam Davies and Wayne Little, on the borough council.On a national level, the ward forms part of the Stourbridge constituency; the current MP is Cat Eccles of the Labour Party.
Places of interest
The Merry Hill Shopping Centre is located immediately east of Brierley Hill. One of the largest shopping centres in the UK, it was built between 1985 and 1989 on the grounds of Merry Hill Farm, the last working urban farm in the West Midlands.Round Oak Steelworks was built in 1857 on land overlooking the site of what is now the Merry Hill Centre. It employed up to 3,000 people at its peak, but that figure had fallen to just over 1,200 by the time it closed in December 1982. The adjacent Waterfront office complex was built on the former steelworks site, being developed between 1989 and 1995, although since the Great Recession, around half of its office units have become empty, with an application for government-funded Enterprise Zone status rejected.
The original T. H. Baker store was on the High Street, central to the town since 1888; it closed in July 2018. The West Bromwich Building Society had intended to relocate to the Waterfront from its previous base in West Bromwich in 2012, although the plan was later shelved.
The art deco former Danilo Cinema opened on Dudley Road in December 1936, with an opening ceremony conducted by George Formby and the young Viscount Ednam, who stepped in when his father, the Earl of Dudley, arrived late.
Brierley Hill Civic Hall, situated on Bank Street in the town centre, hosted several of Slade's first concerts during the early 1970s, although none of the members were actually from Brierley Hill.
Geography
Amblecote
became part of Brierley Hill because Stourbridge has a small postal sorting office, despite being 2 miles away and historically part of Stourbridge.Brockmoor
Brockmoor is situated to the immediate north of the town centre. On the border with Wordsley was the Bottle and Glass Inn, erected on the bank of the Dudley Canal in about 1800 as The Bush. It remained here until 1980, when it was transferred to the Black Country Living Museum as a centrepiece of the then-new village.St John's Church, Brockmoor, is Grade II listed. It was built in 1844–1845 to designs by Thomas Smith and was made predominantly using Staffordshire blue bricks.
It is also home to Brockmoor Primary School, which has existed at its current site in Belle Isle since 1994. The original school was built in the late 19th century, as an infant school for 5 to 7 year-olds and a junior school for 7 to 11 year-olds; it became a first school for 5–8 year-olds and a middle school for 8 to 12 year-olds in September 1972. However, the two schools merged in September 1989 to form Brockmoor Primary School and a year later the age range was altered to 5 to 11.
Pensnett
is situated more than a mile north of the town centre and borders the townships of Sedgley, Kingswinford and Dudley.Withymoor Village
Withymoor Village and Lakeside lie to the south of the town centre bordering Stourbridge and were mostly developed in the 1970s and 1980s, following open cast coalmining. A Sainsbury's store is at the centre of the village. The estate is served by Diamond Bus service 142/142A.Chapel Street Estate
Chapel Street Estate was developed during the 1960s with predominantly multi-storey flats on the site of a Victorian residential area.Hundreds of terraced houses had been built on the site of Chapel Street during the 19th century, housing the many industrial workers who were being employed at new factories like the Round Oak Steel Works. But by the end of the Second World War, many of these houses were unfit for human habitation and plans were soon being made for their demolition.
By the end of the 1960s, all of the old houses in the area had been demolished and replaced by a new housing estate that consisted entirely of council flats.
Quarry Bank
is situated to the southeast of the town centre and leads to the border with Cradley Heath and Stourbridge. It has a bustling village high street with many independent shops, Church and Stevens Park. Like Amblecote it is part of the Stourbridge constituency.Hawbush Estate
Estate stands one mile to the west of the town centre; it was developed in the late 1920s and early 1930s.Transport
Brierley Hill is sited along the main A461 road between Stourbridge and Dudley, with other roads providing connections to neighbouring locations. A bypass now diverts the road on a new alignment behind the Asda store rather than through the town centre.The town is served by many bus routes, with a bus station situated at the Merry Hill Shopping Centre and several bus stops along the main High Street. Routes provide links to central Dudley, Halesowen, Stourbridge, Walsall, West Bromwich, Kidderminster and Wolverhampton.
The nearest station is Cradley Heath, over a mile south-east of the town. West Midlands Trains operates frequent services to,,, and.
Between 1850 and 1962, Brierley Hill railway station served passengers on the Oxford-Worcester-Wolverhampton Line between Dudley Town and Stourbridge Junction. The section of line from Stourbridge to Brierley Hill is still in use for goods trains, with a railway steel terminal opening in 1986, but the line northbound to Dudley has been closed since 1993.
An extension to the West Midlands Metro will see the railway line north of Brierley Hill reopened, with light rail services providing a link to the existing Metro line in Wednesbury and Dudley to the north, with Stourbridge to the south.