Sedgley

Sedgley is a town within the Metropolitan Borough of Dudley, in the West Midlands of England. Historically a part of Staffordshire, Sedgley was anciently a manor composed of a series of villages: Sedgley, Cotwall End, Upper Gornal, Lower Gornal, Gornal Wood, Gospel End, Woodsetton, Ettingshall, Coseley and Brierley (now called Bradley, not to be confused with Brierley Hill).

History
In 1897, the villages of Coseley, Ettingshall and Brierley broke away from the Manor of Sedgley to form the Coseley Urban District Council. At the same time, Sedgley Urban District Council was formed to include the rest of the manor, apart from Gospel End - which then became part of Seisdon Rural District, although it is still part of the Sedgley DY3 postal district. The entire area was part of the Wolverhampton Parliamentary Borough, created in 1832.

Sedgley Urban District Council survived until 1966 when the majority of the area became part of Dudley County Borough, which at the same time also took in the urban district councils of Coseley and Brierley Hill. Some parts of Sedgley were placed in South Staffordshire and Wolverhampton, while small sections of Coseley became part of Sandwell and Wolverhampton.

Sedgley really developed from a village into a town after World War I when thousands of residential and commercial properties were developed across the area by the council and by private developers. Most of the houses in Sedgley were built in the 1950s and 1960s, in response to the development of Baggeridge Colliery which closed on March 2, 1968. The land was bought by Seisdon Rural District Council and it was granted country park status in 1970. On January 12, 1981, full reclamation of the land commenced.

Many pre-1900 buildings in Sedgley survive to this day. They include Queen Victoria Primary School (1897), All Saints' Church (1805) and the early 19th century Court House which was originally the local court of law but is now a public house.

Sedgley Beacon Hill is 237 m above sea level and is the second-highest point in the West Midlands. It is well-known for fossils. The hill was once the site where beacons were lit to warn local people of invaders. Sedgley Beacon Hill provides views across The Black Country, Cannock Chase and Birmingham to the east, and to the Wrekin, Clee Hills and Malvern Hills to the west, and on very clear days it is possible to see the hills of North Staffordshire and Derbyshire, as well as the mountains of both North and South Wales.

2002 Earthquake
The 2002 earthquake is commonly known as the Dudley earthquake but the epicentre actually occurred in Brick Kiln Lane, Gornal Wood near Himley Road. It measured at 4.7 on the Richter scale and lasted 20 seconds. Tremors were felt some 200 miles away in North Yorkshire, and damage was done to several buildings, but there were no deaths or serious injuries.

Dormston School lottery grant
The Dormston School received a National Lottery grant in July 1996 to contribute towards the cost of building a high quality sports and arts centre on its site. Work began in early 1998, with the facilities opening in March 2000 and being officially opened on 1 December that year. Two years later, the Dudley News criticised the project as a "failure" as few people in the local area were making use of it and a number of people did not even know where it was.

Bull Ring
The central area of Sedgley, so named because it was originally the site of bull baiting before the sport was declared illegal in 1835. All signs of the actual ring were destroyed in about 1930 on the construction of a traffic island, but the traffic island is still know as the "Bull Ring".

The Bull Ring site has been occupied by a traffic island since about 1950. It is surrounded by a few public houses. The Court House, built in the early 19th century, was once the town's magistrates' court. These law courts were relocated to a building at the nearby police station until the town's courts were declared redundant in 1988. The Court House is still open, having been part of the Mr Q's pub chain, however it is now independently owned. The Red Lion is approximately the same age as the Court House, and was once the village prison. It is still connected to the Court House by a passageway, though this has long fallen into disuse. The Clifton was opened in 1937 as Sedgley's first cinema, and remained open until 1978, when it closed and was converted into a bingo hall before being taken over by JD Wetherspoon and converted into a public house in 1998.

Presto opened a large supermarket on High Holborn in the town centre in 1987, on the site of a former filling station - with a former public car park being incorporated into the supermarket. A year later it was rebranded Safeway, and since 2004 has been owned by Midcounties Co-Operative.

High Arcal Estate
Situated to the south of the town centre. It was developed in phases on part of a public open space between 1991 and 1996, and consists of around 300 Housing Association houses, flats and bungalows. Three-bedroom houses are the most frequent type of property in the area. Some residents on the estate are tenants of their homes, while others have shared ownership or full ownership. High Arcal is the largest post-1970s housing development in Sedgley.

Cotwall End
Situated around the rural Cotwall End Valley. A few pre-1900 buildings still exist, but the face of the area has changed dramatically since the Second World War by the construction of mostly upmarket detached houses in Cotwall End Road and Catholic Lane. Cotwall End Primary School has served the area since 1962. There is also a nature reserve which was previously owned by Dudley MBC and had free admission, but has since been sold to a private landowner and admission fees now have to be paid.

A nature reserve was opened in the area by Dudley council in 1969, and for 30 years entry was free until the council introduced entry charges.

Brownswall Estate
Situated to the north of Cotwall End Valley, this private housing estate was developed by Coseley-based builders Joseph Webb during the 1950s, consisting of semi-detached and detached houses and bungalows with either two or three bedrooms. It is also served by a recreation ground which includes a large football pitch and until recently a children's play area, but the play area was finally dismantled in 2000 after years of vandalism.

The top of the Brownswall Estate near Cotwall End features a row of shops with flats above them.

Former Walsall F.C. footballer Chris Marsh was born in Wordsley Hospital in 1970 and lived on the Brownswall estate for his Teens and early Twenties.

Northway
Situated north of Cotwall End towards the border with Wolverhampton. The first houses in this area were built just after the Second World War, but the vast majority of the area consists of private houses built during the 1960s and 1970s. Alder Coppice Primary School was opened on the Northway estate in 1963. Adjoining the estate is Sedgley Hall Park.

The centre of the Northway Estate features a shopping area, medical centre, supermarket and public house.

Woodsetton
Situated two miles east of Sedgley town centre, on the main road towards Tipton - although it curiously has a Dudley DY1 postcode. The original parish of Woodsetton takes in Dudley Castle, hence a famous local history question: 'What is the oldest building in Sedgley?' Famous buildings in Woodsetton include Holdens Brewery and the Park Inn public house. Since the 1950s, children in Woodsetton have had a primary school in their local community - Bramford Primary School.

One of the most familiar sights in the Black Country was the wooden cobbler's hut on the corner of Sedgley Road and Birmingham New Road, which was set up by cobbler Jim Hughes during the 1950s. He remained at the site until the late 1980s, when he closed his business down and the shed was demolished.

Most of the houses in Woodsetton are on the Bramford housing estate. The first houses on the estate were built in the late 1930s, but only a handful of houses had been completed by the time the Second World War began, and the bulk of the estate was developed in the late 1940s and 1950s. Several hundred houses exist on the estate, with a mix of private and council tenure.

Sedgley Beacon
Sedgley Beacon is one of several Beacon hills in England. From Sedgley Beacon, you can see another Beacon hill - Barr Beacon, some 15 miles away. A council housing estate was built at the foot of Sedgley Beacon in the interwar years and named the Beacon Estate.

Primary schools

 * Queen Victoria Primary School - built in 1897, situated in the town centre. Queen Victoria was one of the first primary schools to take part in a government-sponsored initiative to extend school hours with additional programs beyond the traditional school day, aimed at making better use of public resources for community benefit. New classrooms were built in 2006 to replace mobile classrooms that had been at the school since the 1970s. The original 1897 building is still in existence, and another building dating from 1931 is also still standing. Since the reconstruction of Roberts Primary School in 2000, Queen Victoria has been the oldest school building in Sedgley still being used for education. Students from Queen Victoria mostly transfer to The Dormston School; situated adjacent to the Queen Victoria school site. The two schools often collaborate in enrichment programs for younger students such as the JSLA (Junior Sports Leaders Award) students attending the primary school to teach younger students. Queen Victoria often use the Mill Theatre for school productions - notably the first production to take place under such circumstance was "A Spaceman Came Travelling" for the Millenium production. The school is a 3-11 school which includes a nursery unit which opened in the 1970s, the same time that additions were made to the primary school buildings to accommodate increased pupils. However, the school lost a significant number of its pupils to the new Alder Coppice and Cotwall End schools during the 1960s. From September 1972 until July 1990, the school had 12 year olds on its roll.[
 * Cotwall End Primary School - built in 1962, situated about half a mile west of the town centre. It provides a one-form entry for pupils of primary school age. It became a two-form entry school in 1971 following the completion of a new infants school building. Cotwall End was originally a separate infant and junior schools (becoming a first and middle school in 1972), but merged in 1981 to form a single primary school, with the first and middle school departments reverting to infant and junior school when the leaving age was reduced from 12 to 11 in 1990.
 * Alder Coppice Primary School - built in 1963, situated about a mile north-west of the town centre on the Northway Estate. The current headteacher is Dr Duncan Jones, who arrived in January 2006 to replace the retiring Mr David Cox, who had been at the school since 1999. His predecessor was Mrs Barbara Carter. The school's previous headteacher, Mr Colin Gould, left in about 1996 for disciplinary reasons. Alder Coppice was put into special measures in December 1999 after OFSTED inspectors criticised the school's weak management of resources and lack of direction, but it came out of special measures 18 months later and is successful again. Doctor Duncan Jones took over from David Cox in January 2005. It was originally two separate infant and junior schools (5-7 and 7-11 respectively), with a nursery unit being added in the 1970s around the same time that the infant and junior schools became first and middle schools in September 1972. However, the first and middle schools merged to form a primary school in September 1988, and the two departments reverted to infant and junior in September 1990 when the age of secondary transfer was reduced from 12 to 11.
 * St Chad's R.C Primary School (Sedgley)|St Chad's R.C Primary School - is a Roman Catholic primary school although, a significant number of non-Catholic children are in attendance. St Chad's Catholic School was first opened in 1870 in a building attached to the church. Two teachers taught about 68 children. In 1876, the Victorian School was completed, but eventually became overcrowded. In 1954, work started on the New School. The first three classrooms opened in 1956. Later in 1962 the hall was added. After 1969, the old school became the Dining Room. Further classrooms were added in 1969 and 1973. All three school buildings remain on site, as does the church. It is situated about a quarter of a mile south of the town centre.
 * Straits Primary School - built in 1968 to serve the (then) new Straits housing estate. It is situated about two miles south-west of the town centre. The current headmaster is Mr Adrian Slack, who has been at the helm since September 1997. On his arrival, the school had been placed into special measures by OFSTED inspectors who had criticised the school heavily under its previous management. It came out of special measures in 1999 and is now one of the strongest performing primary schools in the whole Dudley Borough. In September 1989, mobile buildings in the school grounds were used as accommodation for pupils who were starting the new Milking Bank Primary School just over the border in Dudley, as the new school building was not ready in time for the 1989/90 academic year. However, the Milking Bank pupils left the Straits site on 27 November 1989 when their new school buildings was opened.
 * Roberts Primary School - original building opened in 1894 as Roberts Street Infant and Junior Schools, taking their name from the street in which it was located. The infant school became the first school in September 1972 at the same time that the junior school became the middle school, with the two departments merging in September 1984, and reverting to infant and junior schools in September 1990. The old school buildings were replaced by a new, larger, building in 2000 - on the original school's playing fields - to accommodate growing pupil numbers which followed extensive house building in the surrounding area during the 1990s. It is situated about two miles south of the town centre on the border with Dudley. Construction of the new school building began during 1998 and was completed during 2000. Community facilities were later opened, and the new complex was officially opened on 13 June 2002 by Prince Andrew, Duke of York.
 * Redhall Primary School - built in the 1890s, situated about two-and-a-half miles south of the town centre.
 * Bramford Primary School - situated about a mile and a half east of the town centre, it was opened during the 1950s to serve the expanding Woodsetton area, and was expanded in 2004 to include a new sports hall and several classrooms.

Secondary schools

 * Dormston School - built in 1935, situated in the town centre. Has expanded greatly since the late 1960s, and since 1996 has included a sixth form centre in partnership with Dudley College. Its status changed from secondary modern to comprehensive in 1975. The age range on its opening was 11+, before changing to 12-16 in 1972 and 11-16 in 1990.
 * High Arcal School - built in 1961, situated about half a mile east of the town centre, and was a grammar school until becoming comprehensive in 1975. Lacked sixth form facilities from 1990 until 2002, when the sixth form being run in partnership with Dormston School and Dudley College was extended to High Arcal.
 * Ellowes Hall School - built in 1964, situated about a mile and a half south-west of the town centre. Began life as a secondary modern school before turning comprehensive in 1975, around the same time that it gained a sixth form. Is one of the few secondary schools in the Dudley borough to have had its own sixth form in the last 35 years.

Former schools

 * Flax Hall Primary School - opened in the 1950s but closed in 1989 due to falling pupil numbers. The school buildings survive and are now used as a community centre.
 * Tudor County Primary School - opened in the late 19th century, served the community of Upper Gornal until its closure in July 1986. The school buildings were used as an adult education centre until their demolition in 1996, when the site was redeveloped for housing.

All Saints' Church
All Saints' Church is a parish church which is situated in the town centre. The first All Saints' Church was built during the 12th century but the current structure was completed in 1805 and has a capacity to seat more than 1,300 people. The organ which was fitted in the church on its completion had originally been in Westminster Abbey. The church is located on the corner of Vicar Street and Dean Street, with the modern vicarage and church hall on the opposite side of Vicar Street.

At the time, it was the only parish church in the large but relatively lightly populated parish of Sedgley, but the parish was later divided into five ecclesiastical districts - Sedgley, Lower Gornal, Upper Gornal, Ettingshall and Coseley. Each of these newly-created parishes had their own church.

Transport
Sedgley has never had a train link, due its location on a series of hills. For the same reason, there are no canals in the town. During the 19th century, however, a small canal known as the Foxyards Canal did pass through the Woodsetton area of the town, linking nearby Mons Hill with the Birmingham Canal.

It does, however, have bus links with many neighbouring towns. The town centre has direct bus links with Wolverhampton, Dudley, Coseley, Bilston and Tipton. Until 2006, there was also a link with the Merry Hill Shopping Centre.

The Lower Gornal area of the town has bus links with Kingswinford, Stourbridge, Brierley Hill, Cradley Heath and Blackheath. Before 2007, there was also a link with Halesowen. Unusually, none of these areas have direct bus links with Sedgley town centre.