Priory Estate - History

History

The Priory Estate is so named because it is located near the Priory ruins and Priory Park. It stands on land which once straddled the border of Dudley County Borough and Sedgley Urban District, which were in the counties of Worcestershire and Staffordshire respectively.

The borders were moved back several hundred yards in 1926 when Dudley Council purchased the land with a view to building council houses to rehouse more than 2,000 families from town centre slums. Several hundred council houses had already been built in Dudley since 1920, mostly in the Kates Hill area and on small developments around Netherton, but the Priory Estate was to be the largest council housing development yet in the area as the town's slum problem was still far from being solved.

The boundary changes also meant that Dudley Castle was finally transferred to the borough of Dudley after centuries in Sedgley.

The foundation stone of the very first house, 9 Oak Road, was laid on 16 July 1929.

The first houses were occupied in 1930 and by the end of the decade more than 2,000 houses had been built on the estate. There were also private houses for owner-occupiers built mostly on the south side of the estate near Priory Park, around Priory Road, Hazel Road, Woodland Avenue, Chesnut Avenue, Somery Road, Forest Road, Paganel Drive and Gervase Drive.

Four public houses served the estate: the Wren's Nest in Priory Road (built in the mid-1930s), the King Arthur on the corner of Birmingham New Road and Priory Road, the Washington in Wrens Nest Road (built around the same time as the Wren's Nest), and the Caves in Wrens Hill Road (built in the 1950s).

Priory Park was laid out in 1932, with iron railing around the perimeter, (these were removed during the war for the metal to be used in the war effort.) the same year that Priory Road was fully opened to give Dudley a direct road link with the Birmingham New Road in Coseley - incorporating the Priory Ruins as well as Priory Hall (former home of Sir Gilbert Claughton). Priory Hall is currently in use as Dudley Registry Office, and has been based there since the office's relocation from a building in Ednam Road in about 1990.

Most of the people living in the council houses on the Priory Estate were rehoused from town centre slum clearances. They were generally pleased with living in new houses which had gardens. Hot & cold running tap water, bathrooms next to the kitchen] A solid fuel fed boiler for doing the washing of clothes etc. in the kitchen and a larder with a concrete block shelf. Gas lighting was converted to electric about the early 1950s, Plumbing|outdoor toilets refurbished in the 60s to indoor with upstairs bathrooms and toilet.and gardens.

But the Priory Estate quickly ran into problems, with vandalism, litter, graffiti, vehicle crime, burglary and drug dealing becoming widespread, particularly on the north side of the estate, by the 1980s. The homes of elderly people were targeted most frequently; in 1991, a plank of wood was hurled through the window of a room in which a 90-year-old woman was sleeping.

The most famous former resident of the Priory Estate is Duncan Edwards, who was born two miles away at Holly Hall but moved to 31 Elm Road as a small child and went on to play 18 times for England as well as winning two Football League championships with Manchester United before he died in 1958 at the age of 21 from injuries sustained in the Munich air disaster. As a child, he had attended Priory Primary School and then Wolverhampton Street School. After his death, a stained glass window was dedicated to Edwards at St Francis parish church at the junction of Laurel Road and Poplar Crescent. The church was founded during 1931 and originally based at Priory Hall before the church building on the newly developed housing estate was opened on 10 May 1932.

The estate was served by a secondary school from 1965, when Mons Hill School opened on Wrens Hill Road (running between the Priory and the neighbouring Wren's Nest Estate) to replace Wolverhampton Street School. This school closed in 1990 due to falling pupil numbers, with the remaining pupils split between Castle High and Coseley School. The Mons Hill buildings then became part of Dudley College.