Smethwick

Smethwick
Staffordshire
Smethwick Heritage Centre
Location
Grid reference:	SP0287
Location:	52°29’34"N, 1°58’6"W
Data
Population:	48,180  (2001)
Post town:	Smethwick
Postcode:	B66, B67
Dialling code:	0121
Local Government
Council:	Sandwell
Parliamentary constituency:	Warley

Smethwick is a town in Staffordshire, within the Black Country and contiguous with the surrounding towns of the Black Country conurbation. It originates as a hamlet within the parish of Harborne, but the tables have turned somewhat as Harborne is now a modest though well-to-do Birmingham suburb while Smethwick is a large, industrialised town to its north.

History

The Old Church

Smethwick has previously been suggested to mean "smiths' village" however a more recent interpretation has suggested the name means "Smooth land village". Smethwick was recorded in the Domesday Book as Smedeuuich. Until the end of the 18th century it was an outlying hamlet of the south Staffordshire village of Harborne.

The oldest 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 public house next to it is still called this. In the church there are several fine memorials, including one to Dorothy Parkes.

From the 18th century, three generations of the Birmingham Canal Navigations Main Line were built through Smethwick, carrying coal and goods between the Black Country and Birmingham.

• James Brindley built the first canal, the Old Line, over the Smethwick Summit in 1769
• his summit level was lowered and improved by John Smeaton in 1790
• Thomas Telford built a parallel, more direct route, in deeper cuttings and without locks, the New Line, in 1829.

The Grade-I-listed Galton Bridge spans the New Line canal and railway. When built in 1829 by Telford, it was the longest 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.

Matthew Boulton and James Watt opened their Soho Foundry in the North of Smethwick (not to be confused with the Soho Manufactory in nearby Soho) 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..

The world's oldest working engine, made by Boulton and Watt, the Smethwick Engine, originally stood near Bridge Street, Smethwick. It is now at Thinktank, the new science museum in Birmingham.

The public library by Yeoville Thomason

The public library in the High Street was originally built as the Public Hall in 1866-7 and is designed by Yeoville Thomason.

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 (GKN), 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 (the London works, in North Smethwick, manufactured its metalwork). 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 Worcestershire in 1928.

The Ruskin Pottery Studio, named in honour of the artist John Ruskin, was in Oldbury Road. Many churches have stained glass windows made by Hardman Studios in Lightwoods House, or, before that, by the Camm family.

The parents of the former Prime Minister John Major married at Holy Trinity Church in Smethwick while they were on tour with a music hall variety act.

During the Second World War, Smethwick was bombed on a number of occasions by the Luftwaffe. A total of 80 people died as a result of these air raids.

The old Toll House

After the Second World War, Smethwick attracted a large number of immigrants from Commonwealth countries, the largest ethnic group being Sikhs from the Punjab in India. The ethnic minority communities were initially very unpopular with the white British population of Smethwick, prompting the election of Conservative Party Member of Parliament (MP) Peter Griffiths at the 1964 general election, in which the Labour Party MP was unseated following the campaign slogan "If you want a nigger for a neighbour, vote Labour" by his supporters. This came two years after race riots had hit the town in 1962 and was set against a background of factory closures and a growing waiting list for local council accommodation.

In the 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 concrete blocks the estate was known locally as the 'concrete jungle'. The estate quickly became unpopular and was redeveloped in the early 1990s with modern low-rise housing and renamed Galton Village. Another housing estate called the Windmill Lane Estate, located near Cape Hill, met a similar fate.

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.

Rofle 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.

Industry and commerce

Mitchells & Butlers opened a brewery on Cape Hill in 1879. It was a local landmark in Smethwick and provided employment in the town for 123 years. However, following a decline in sales and revenue, the owners closed the brewery on 6 December 2002. It was demolished two years later and a 650-home private housing estate was developed on its site.

Teale & Yates Ltd (Inc.28/11/1962) - the fish, game & poultry shop, also selling fruit and vegetables was on the High Street for many years during the 1960-70s providing good quality fresh food for many local people. The shop was owned by Arthur Teale and his wife Joan, with their eldest son joining the family business in the early '70s.

Canals

Smethwick has a long association with canals, which were the town’s first major transport links from a time before decent roads and of course railways. The Birmingham Canal Navigation Old and New Main Line Canals run through the industrial areas and right past the High Street, running parallel to the Stour Valley Railway Line: all three end up in Wolverhampton. James Brindley was the engineer charged with building the canal, a man who gives his name to the busy district in the centre of Birmingham near the International Convention Centre, National Indoor Arena and Broad Street.

The old main line was completed though Smethwick by 1769. It required 12 locks to climb over the hill though the town; Brindley had found the earth too soft to dig a cutting though at the time. Water was supplied by two steam engines. One of them was located on the Engine Arm which led to the Smethwick Engine on Rabone Lane and the other was near Spon Lane. Smethwick New Pumping Station next to Brasshouse Lane was added later in 1892. Because of the locks the canal through Smethwick became a bottleneck, and Thomas Telford was commissioned in 1824 to look at alternatives.

The new main line through Smethwick was completed by 1829 and completely bypassed all six remaining locks of the summit with a deep cutting. The Engine Arm and Stewarts Aqueducts were built to carry their respective canals over the new mainline. The cutting was built through the land of the local businessman Samuel Galton and thus this cutting created the Galton Valley and Galton Bridge was named in his honour. The bridge was the longest single-span iron bridge in the world at the time. The canals of the new and old main line diverged at one end at Smethwick Junction near Bridge Street and rejoined at Bromford Junction near Bromford Road in Oldbury.

Today Galton Valley is a nature area and of more historical interest than commercial, and used mainly for leisure rather than transporting commercial goods.

Churches

Churches in Smethwick include:

• Church of England:
  • The Old Church, The Uplands
  • Holy Trinity Church, South Road & High Street
  • St Hildas, Abbey Road
  • St Marks Church, Hales Lane
  • St Matthew With St Chad, St Matthews Road
• Baptist:
  • Bearwood Baptist Church, Bearwood Road
  • Smethwick Baptist Church, Regent Street
• Congregationalist:
  • West Smethwick Congregational Church, Mallin Street
• Independent evangelical:
  • Rainbow New Life Centre Apostolic Church Apostolic Church, Broomfield
  • Raglan Road Christian Church, Raglan Road
• Pentecostal:
  • Church Of God Of Prophecy, Regent Street
  • Smethwick Elim Pentecostal Church, Woodland Drive
• Methodist:
  • Akril Memorial Methodist Church, Londonderry Lane
  • Rounds Green Methodist Church, Abbey Road
  • Warley Woods Methodist Church, Abbey Road
• Roman Catholic:
  • St Gregorys Roman Catholic Church, Three Shires Oak Road
  • St Philips Roman Catholic Church, Messenger Road

Smethwick also has three Sikh gurdwaras.

Parks

• Victoria Park: High Street & Windmill Lane Estate
• Smethwick Hall Park: Stoney Lane, Uplands
• West Smethwick Park: Holy Lane & West Park Road, West Smethwick
• Harry Mitchell Park: Parks Street & Coopers Lane, Uplands
• Black Patch Park: Foundry Lane, Soho
• Lightwoods Park: Hagley Road & Lightwoods Hill, Bearwood
• Warley Park: Abbey Road & Lightwoods Hill, Bearwood

Popular culture

• Smethwick was the main setting for Frank Skinner's mercifully short-lived sitcom Blue Heaven.

Outside links

("Wikimedia Commons" has material about Smethwick)

• Smethwick: Economic history - A History of the County of Stafford: Volume XVII: Offlow hundred (part) (1976), pp.107-18