Bilston

Bilston is a town in the English county of West Midlands, situated in the southeastern corner of the City of Wolverhampton. Three wards of Wolverhampton City Council cover the town: Bilston East and Bilston North, which almost entirely comprise parts of the historic Borough of Bilston, and Ettingshall which comprise a part of Bilston and parts of Wolverhampton.

History
Historically within Staffordshire, Bilston was first referred to in AD 985 as Bilsatena when Wolverhampton was granted to Wulfrun then in 996 as Bilsetnatun in the grant charter of St. Mary's Church (now St. Peter's Collegiate Church, Wolverhampton). It is later mentioned in the Domesday Book as a village called Billestune, being a largely rural area until the 19th century. Bilsetnatun can be interpreted as meaning the settlement (ton) of the folk (saetan) of the ridge (bill).

Situated just two miles southeast of Wolverhampton, it was extensively developed for factories and coal mining. Many houses were constructed in the Bilston area. Between 1920 and 1966, the council replaced most of the 19th century terraced houses with rented modern houses and flats on developments like Stowlawn, The Lunt and Bunker's Hill. Bilston has had a market in the town centre for many years.

Bilston Urban District Council was formed in 1894 under the Local Government Act 1894 covering the ancient parish of Bilston. The urban district was granted a Royal Charter in 1933, becoming a municipal borough and the First Charter Mayor was Alderman Herbert Beach.

In 1966 the Borough of Bilston was abolished, with most of its territory incorporated into the County Borough of Wolverhampton (see History of West Midlands), although parts of Bradley in the east of the town were merged into Walsall borough.

Bilston Town Hall (pictured below in about 1900) has now been refurbished and re-opened. It had been derelict for more than a decade after Wolverhampton Council discontinued its use as housing offices. It is hoped that the town hall will be brought back into public use following the completion of its refurbishment. It dates back to the 19th century.

Council housing was first developed in the town around 1920 and by 1964 there were more than 6,000 council houses there.

Since 1966, Bilston has been the centre of the WV14 postal district, which also incorporated most of Coseley and parts of Darlaston - although all of Darlaston is situated in the Walsall borough and approximately half of the former Coseley urban district council is situated in Dudley.

St Leonard's Church
Christian worship in Bilston can be traced back to the original chapel dating from 1090. In 1458 the chapel was replaced by St Leonard's Chantry. And a third renovated church was consecrated in 1733. The modern church dates from a rebuilding of 1826 and is thus the fourth church on the same site. The church has a stunningly modern appearance being whitewashed inside and out, giving it a very neat and clean appearance compared to most English churches. In this respect it resembles many American and German churches and some of the Russian Orthodox Churches. It is also unusual in having a chamfered square tower, giving it an octagonal appearance, in being surmounted with a cupola, a golden globe with weather vane and a fenced viewing platform. These are all extremely unusual features rarely found in English churches.

Industry
Few towns were more dramatically transformed during the Industrial Revolution as Bilston was. In 1800, it was still a largely rural area dependent on farming. By 1900, it was a busy town with numerous factories and coalmines, as well as a large number of houses that had been built to house the workers and their families.

Bilston Steelworks opened to the west of the town centre during the 19th century and was the most dominant factory in the town. However, it closed in April 1979 as Britain's economy slid towards recession and the Bilston plant was one of the first major casualties of this downturn, which saw unemployment double from around 1,500,000 in 1979 to more than 3,000,000 in 1982.

The industry remained prolific during the interwar years, but much of the housing was now sub-standard, and during the 1920s and 1930s many of the older houses were cleared and replaced by new council houses that featured so many modern conveniences that were previously unknown to their occupants. Many of these houses were built on new housing estates previously occupied by coalfields or farmland, though some were built on the sites of older houses.

The council housing revolution in Bilston continued after the Second World War and for some time after the area became part of Wolverhampton in 1966.

By the end of the 1970s, almost all of the sub-standard housing in Bilston had been cleared, but the area was in the early stages of an industrial decline which put hundreds of local people out of work and saw unemployment reach its highest levels in living memory. Things have improved over the last 20 years with more businesses in the service sector setting up around Bilston, but unemployment is still higher than the local average.

Other exciting modern day projects in Bilston include the Black Country Route (opened in phases between 1986 and 1995), that gave Bilston quick road links to important towns such as Dudley and Walsall, and the opening of the Midland Metro tram line in 1999, which gives a speedy public transport link to Wolverhampton and Birmingham.

People
Bilston was the birthplace of the poet Sir Henry Newbolt and Nelson, New Zealand Mayor George Page.

John Wilkinson, "king of the ironmasters", built a blast furnace in Bilston in 1748. He lived and died in Bradley, West Midlands. His body was returned to his hometown of Clifton in Cumberland.

Hugh Walters lived all his life in Bilston.

James Fleet (born 1954) is a British actor. He is most famous for his roles as the bumbling and well-meaning Tom in the 1994 British romantic comedy film Four Weddings and a Funeral, and the dim-witted Hugo Horton in the BBC situation comedy television series The Vicar of Dibley.

David Daker, born in Bilston in 1937, is a British actor. His best-known roles are in television. He played PC Owen Culshaw in Z-Cars, Jarvis in Porridge, Captain Nathan Spiker in Dick Turpin and Harry Crawford in Boon.

Don Powell, drummer in the band Slade, was born in Bilston.

Clive Pomeroy. One time hair stylist and inventor of the "1000 yard stare"

Richard Salter began making the first spring scales in Britain in Bilston in the late 1760s.

Transport
From 1850 to 1972 there was a railway station in Bilston town centre, but passenger services were then withdrawn and the line via Bilston (from Wolverhampton Low Level to Birmingham Snow Hill) had been almost completely abandoned within a decade. The final stub of the railway, connecting a town centre scrapyard with the South Staffordshire Line at Wednesbury, closed in 1992, only to be re-opened seven years later as the first phase of the Midland Metro tram line between Wolverhampton and Birmingham.

There was also a further railway station within the town: Bilston West on the Oxford-Worcester-Wolverhampton Line.

Another significant development in the Bilston area was the A463 Black Country Route. With more and more cars on the road, the roads around Bilston town centre became increasingly congested as the twentieth century progressed. It became so severe that, by the late 1960s, the government had drawn up plans for a new motorway bypassing Bilston (and running from the A4123 near Coseley to Junction 10 of the M6 motorway at Walsall), which was scheduled to be completed by 1976. However, the plans collapsed and Bilston was condemned to increased congestion, for another decade at least.

The plans for a new dual carriageway were revived in the early 1980s. This time the planners had decided on a slightly different route, which would run much closer to Bilston town centre. The first phase of the road (to be known as Black County Route) was completed in 1986, though initially running around half a mile east of the A4123. It was extended in 1990 to Oxford Street in Bilston town centre. This expansion resulted in a number of buildings being demolished and some roads having to be re-routed while one road (Market Street) was completely obliterated. This new road changed the face of Bilston town centre forever.

During 1995, the final phase of the Black Country Route between Bilston town centre and Junction 10 of the M6 was completed. This new road has seen a major improvement in the traffic flow around Bilston town centre.

Bilston is served by several bus routes at Bilston bus station. It is also served by National Express West Midlands service 79 (Birmingham - West Bromwich - Wednesbury - Darlaston - Bilston - Wolverhampton).

Arts and culture
At the Bilston end of the Black Country Route can be seen the group of wooden statues designed by Robert Koenig and called "Steel Columns." "This sculpture was made from 15 lengths of sweet chestnut which stretch up to 6 metres in height. The male and female figures depicted are based on those found in old Victorian photographs of Bilston. The title Steel Columns is a reference to Bilston's steel making background and the connection the figures had with this history."

Art and craft works of local significance from the eighteenth century are displayed at Bilston Craft Gallery, which also has a temporary exhibition space where local art and crafts are often displayed.

The artist William Harold Dudley as born in Bilston; several of his works are in the collection of Wolverhampton Art Gallery.

Education
Bilston has many primary schools, and two secondary schools - South Wolverhampton and Bilston Academy, which is presently split between two sites - only one of which being in Bilston - and Moseley Park School, which was originally Bilston Boys' Grammar. Manor Primary School, which used to be a secondary school, is sometimes incorrectly believed to be in Bilston, but is actually in Woodcross which is within the Wolverhampton-governed part of Coseley.

Crime
In recent years, Bilston has been the scene of several high profile crimes, some of which highlight the town's growing problem with knife and gun crime and gang culture.

On 30 September 2007, the body of 16-year-old Shane Owoo was recovered from a flooded clay pit near the Lunt estate. Two Wolverhampton men, Christopher Lewis and Marvin Walker, were found guilty of manslaughter on 25 April 2008 and sentenced to five and a half years in prison. The jury at Birmingham Crown Court heard that the pair had frogmarched Shane Owoo to the pool amid allegations that he had stolen a bicycle from one of the defendants. A third man, Tobias Davies, received a 12-month prison sentence for assaulting Shane Awoo, but had not been present when the other two men attacked him and chased him into the pool where he drowned.

On 28 July 2009, 47-year-old Moxley pub landlord Swinder Singh Batth was shot dead in the town centre outside Gavin's Sports Bar. Jasbir Singh Takhar, of Coseley, and Sukwinder Singh Sanghera, of West Bromwich, were jailed for life a year later for the murder; it was established that they had been attempting to shoot someone else. The trial judge recommended minimum terms of 29 and 28 years respectively. Five other people received prison sentences of between 21 months and three years for conspiracy to commit violent disorder in connection with the crime, while a sixth person received a three-and-half year prison sentence for witness intimidation.

On 21 November 2009, 50-year-old Dudley man Daniel McCalla was shot dead at the town's Tropical Harmony nightclub.

On 10 July 2010, 34-year-old local man Thomas Berry was stabbed in Church Street during a fight between two gangs. He died in hospital the next day. Local man Ricky Shaw, a 23-year-old bodybuilder with convictions for drug dealing and violence, was found guilty of Mr Berry's murder on 25 February 2011 and sentenced to life imprisonment with a recommended minimum term of 27 years. He was also found guilty of attempting to murder another man in the fight as well as wounding another and also assaulting his own brother.

On 11 November 2010, 31-year-old Lee Douglas was found shot dead at a house in Arthur Street.

Bilston's districts

 * Bradley
 * Woodcross
 * The Lunt
 * Stowlawn

Parliament
The town had its own parliament constituency from 1918 until 1974, which also included nearby Sedgley and Coseley. However, it was then incorporated into Wolverhampton South East, and under further boundary reorganisation it could be divided into up to four parliamentary seats from 2015, with the bulk of the town being divided between two reorganised Wolverhampton seats but smaller parts of the town being absorbed into Dudley and Walsall constituencies.