Smethwick - History

History

Smethwick has previously been suggested to mean 'smiths' place of work' however a more recent interpretation has suggested the name means "The settlement on the smooth land". 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. 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 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, Birmingham. 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 nearby 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 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 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.

Former Prime Minister John Major's parents married at Holy Trinity Church in Smethwick while they were on tour with a music hall variety act.

During World War II, 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 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.