Smethwick
Smethwick is an industrial town in the Sandwell district, in the county of the West Midlands, England. It lies west of Birmingham city centre. Historically it was in Staffordshire and then Worcestershire before being placed into West Midlands county.
In 2019, the ward of Smethwick had an estimated population of 15,246, while the wider built-up area subdivision has a population of 53,653.
History
It was suggested that the name Smethwick meant "smiths' place of work", but a more recent interpretation has suggested the name means "the settlement on the smooth land". Smethwick was recorded in the Domesday Book as Smedeuuich, the d in this spelling being the Anglo-Saxon letter eth. Until the end of the 18th century it was an outlying hamlet of the south Staffordshire village of Harborne. Harborne became part of the county borough of Birmingham and thus transferred from Staffordshire to Warwickshire in 1891, leaving Smethwick in the County of Staffordshire.The world's oldest working engine, the Smethwick Engine, made by Boulton & Watt, originally stood near Bridge Street, Smethwick. It is now at Thinktank, the new science museum in Birmingham.
One notable company was The London Works, manufacturing base of the Fox Henderson Company which made the cast-iron framework for the Crystal Palace. This was founded by Charles Fox, whose inventions included the first patented railway points. His notable employees included William Siemens, the notable mechanical and electrical engineer. The company was bankrupted in 1855 by the failure of an overseas railway to pay for work done. The site was later used by the GKN company. In 2015 the site was being cleared to build the new Midland Metropolitan University Hospital which aims to combine the Sandwell General Hospital at West Bromwich and City Hospital, Dudley Road. Work at the site later came to a standstill because of a crisis in the construction industry.
File:Wills's Cigarettes - Borough of Smethwick - 1906.jpg|thumb|upright|Cigarette card issued in 1906 by Wills's Cigarettes, depicting the Borough of Smethwick's "seal used in place of arms". The seal carries the Latin motto "Orbis Terrarum Officina" and depicts a James Watt engine, a lighthouse, a gasometer and a blacksmith working at his anvil.
Other former industry included railway rolling stock manufacture, at the Birmingham Railway Carriage and Wagon Company factory; screws and other fastenings from Guest, Keen and Nettlefolds ; engines from Tangye; tubing from Evered's; steel pen nibs from British Pens; and various products from Chance Brothers' glassworks, including lighthouse lenses and the glazing for the Crystal Palace. Phillips Cycles, once one of the largest bicycle manufacturers in the world, was based in Bridge Street, Smethwick. Nearby, in Downing Street, is the famous bicycle saddle maker, Brooks Saddles. The important metalworking factory of Henry Hope & Sons Ltd was based at Halford's Lane where the company manufactured steel window systems, roof glazing, gearings and metalwork.
Council housing began in Smethwick after 1920 on land previously belonging to the Downing family, whose family home became Holly Lodge High School for Girls in 1922. The mass council house building of the 1920s and 1930s also involved Smethwick's boundaries being extended into part of neighbouring Oldbury in 1928.
The Ruskin Pottery Studio, named in honour of the artist John Ruskin, was in Oldbury Road. Many English churches have stained glass windows made by Hardman Studios in Lightwoods House, or, before that, by the Camm family.
During the Second World War, Smethwick was bombed on a number of occasions by the German Luftwaffe. A total of 80 people died as a result of these air raids.
After the First World War about 50+ Sikh families settled in Smethwick beginning in 1917, with a majority of the men being veterans of the war. After the Second World War, Smethwick attracted a large number of immigrants from Commonwealth countries beginning in 1945, the largest ethnic group being Sikhs from the Punjab in India, the majority of whom had served in that War. The ethnic minority communities were initially unpopular with the white population of Smethwick, leading to the election of Conservative Party Member of Parliament Peter Griffiths at the 1964 general election, who campaigned by appealing to the racist element and whose supporters had used the slogan, "If you want a nigger for a neighbour, vote Labour". This came two years after race riots had hit the town in 1962; it was also set against a background of local factory closures.
In 1961, the Sikh community purchased the unused Congregational Church on the High Street in Smethwick. Soon after, this was converted into a gurdwara, today known as the .
Bearwood Primary School appointed Tony O'Connor as head teacher in 1967. He was the first black head teacher in the UK, having been born in Jamaica and moved to Britain with the RAF in 1943. Smethwick received bad publicity when, the day after the announcement of his appointment, racist slogans and swastikas were daubed around the school. However, O'Connor was well liked by both parents and children; he eventually retired in 1983.
In the mid- to late 1960s, a large council estate in the west of Smethwick was built. It was officially known as the West Smethwick Estate, but as all of the homes were constructed from concrete the estate was known locally as the "concrete jungle". The homes, mostly three or four storey townhouses, were prone to damp and other construction faults. By the 1980s, levels of crime and unemployment on the estate were high, and by the early 1990s, Sandwell Council had decided to demolish it. Between 1993 and 1997, the estate was entirely redeveloped with modern low-rise housing, and was renamed Galton Village. Another local housing estate called the Windmill Lane Estate, located near Cape Hill, was also redeveloped. Due to reports of crime, high unemployment rates, and structural issues within the estate, the Windmill Lane Estate, which included high-rise flats Murdoch Place and Boulton place, was demolished in 1988.
There is a collection of red brick turn-of-20th century terrace, 1930s semi-detached, newly built modern housing and a number of high rise blocks of flats. Other estates and areas include Black Patch, Cape Hill, Uplands, Albion Estate, Bearwood, Londonderry and Rood End.
In July 2013, a major fire occurred at the Jayplas plastics and paper recycling plant on Dartmouth Road.
Architecture
The oldest surviving building in Smethwick is the Old Church which stands on the corner of Church Road and the Uplands. This was consecrated in 1732 as a Chapel of Ease in the parish of St Peter, Harborne. The building was originally known as "Parkes' Chapel" in honour of Mistress Dorothy Parkes who bequeathed the money for the church and also for a local school. The chapel was later known as the "Old Chapel", and the public house next to it is still called this. In the church there are several fine memorials, including one to Dorothy Parkes.The Grade I listed Galton Bridge spans the New Line canal and railway. When built in 1829 by Thomas Telford, it was the highest single-span bridge in the world. Its name commemorates Samuel Galton, a local landowner and industrialist. It is identical to Telford's bridge at Holt Fleet over the River Severn built in 1828 and opened in 1830.
The public library in the High Street was originally built as the Public Hall in 1866–67 and is designed by Yeoville Thomason.
Matthew Boulton and James Watt opened their Soho Foundry in the north of Smethwick in the late 18th century. In 1802, William Murdoch illuminated the foundry with gas lighting of his own invention. The foundry was later home to weighing scale makers W & T Avery Ltd.
Rolfe Street public baths were among the first public swimming baths in the country when opened north of the town centre in 1888. The baths remained open for nearly a century before closing. In the late 1980s, the Black Country Museum expressed interest in transferring the building to its site in Dudley and so the transfer of the building began in 1989. It was finally opened to visitors at the museum in 1999, housing the museum's exhibition gallery and archive resource centre.
Thimblemill Library is a Grade II listed building built in brick in the Moderne style.
Political history
The town is notable for a somewhat turbulent political history.It was first created as a separate parliamentary constituency in 1918, having previously been part of the Handsworth constituency. At that year's general election, Christabel Pankhurst, standing as a Women's Party candidate, narrowly failed to become one of Britain's first woman Members of Parliament. She lost to the Labour candidate by 775 votes in a straight fight.
Labour held the seat until 1931; from 1926, the MP was Sir Oswald Mosley, future founder of the British Union of Fascists. Mosley resigned the Labour whip in March 1931, but continued to represent the constituency until it was taken by the Conservatives at that year's general election. Labour won it back at the UK general election of 1945, held on 26 July that year. However, the victorious MP, Alfred Dobbs, was killed in a car crash the very next day. He is thus the shortest-serving Member of Parliament in British history, if one discounts a few cases of people being elected posthumously. In the resulting by-election, Patrick Gordon Walker won again for Labour. The seat remained held by Labour until 1964.
At the 1964 general election, sitting MP Gordon Walker, who was Shadow Foreign Secretary, was defeated in highly controversial circumstances in the constituency by the virulently anti-immigration Conservative Party candidate Peter Griffiths. Smethwick had attracted immigration from the Commonwealth in the economic and industrial growth of the years following the Second World War and Griffiths ran a campaign critical of the government's policy. His supporters had circulated the slogan "If you want a nigger for a neighbour, vote Liberal or Labour." Griffiths refused to condemn the slogan. Colin Jordan, a British Neo-Nazi and later leader of the British Movement, claimed that members of his group had produced the initial slogan as well as spread the publicised poster and sticker campaign which contained it; Jordan's group in the past had also campaigned on other slogans, such as: "Don't vote - a vote for Tory, Labour or Liberal is a vote for more Blacks!". Jordan would also use similar campaign tactics against Gordon Walker in the 1965 Leyton by-election. The election of Griffiths led to Smethwick becoming notorious as 'Britain's most racist town'.
Historian Rachel Yemm argues that the anti-immigration sentiment in the town was the result of a housing shortage, which local newspapers, such as The Smethwick Telephone, blamed on the migrants. Griffiths not only drew on these fears, but also raised racist concerns about 'miscegenation' and argued for the repatriation of migrants.
At the beginning of 1965 Smethwick Council was planning "to purchase all available houses on Marshall Street to prevent their sale to immigrants". This made national headlines, and the plan was later stopped by the government.
In February 1965, American black activist Malcolm X visited Marshall Street just days before his assassination. Earlier in his career he had advocated the complete separation of African Americans from whites, but he now showed his opposition to racial segregation, telling the press:
Malcolm X had been invited to Smethwick by Claudia Jones on behalf of Avtar Singh Jouhl of the Indian Workers' Association. The BBC had been intending to make a feature about a new black-led newspaper, and a BBC News journalist had a view to X having a debate with Griffiths outside a council house in Smethwick. Griffiths declined at late notice, and so an interview with X was conducted on the streets of Smethwick. This was to be one of X's last TV interviews before his assassination nine days later. The footage was never screened until Stephen C Page, a community artist, uncovered the footage in 2005.
Labour candidate and actor Andrew Faulds defeated Griffiths in the 1966 general election, remaining as an MP until his retirement at the 1997 general election, 23 years after Smethwick became part of the Warley East constituency. Griffiths subsequently moved away from the area and later served as Conservative MP for Portsmouth North.