History
Sandwell Valley Country Park was once the site of Sandwell Priory, a 12th century Benedictine monastery which itself was founded on the site of an earlier hermitage. The monastery was closed on the orders of Cardinal Wolsey in 1525 and by 1705 the land was redeveloped once more, into Sandwell Hall, built for the Earl of Dartmouth. From the late 19th century the Hall was used as an asylum, calling itself "Sandwell Hall Industrial School for Mentally Defective Boys".In 1928 Sandwell Hall was demolished due to subsidence caused by mining at Hamstead Colliery and Sandwell Park (Jubilee) Colliery which between them employed over 1,000 miners. A coal tramway ran from the Jubilee pit through the Sandwell Park to the canal / railway at West Bromwich.
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