Brierley Hill, Staffordshire

Historical Description

Brierley Hill, a market-town and an ecclesiastical parish in Kingswinford civil parish, Staffordshire. The town stands on the Stourbridge and Birmingham Canals, 2½ miles NNE of Stourbridge, and has a station on the G.W.R., and a head post office. A new post office was erected in 1894. It lies in a hilly tract of great mineral wealth, has a principal street about a mile long, and several other streets, carries on industry in coal mines, iron, brick, glass, and boiler works, clay fields, iron rolling-mills, chain and spade factories, and making establishments, and publishes two weekly newspapers. The town is a seat of petty sessions, and is governed by a local board, which meets at the town-hall, a building erected in 1874, and containing also a free public reading-room and library. Markets are held on Tuesday and Saturday. The town forms part of the parliamentary borough of Dudley. The church is a cruciform structure, built in 1765, enlarged in 1823 and 1837, and restored in 1885. It has a tower which commands an extensive view. There is a mission church at Delph, and Roman Catholic, Congregational, Baptist, and Wesleyan, and Primitive and New Connexion Methodist chapels at Harts Hill. The ecclesiastical parish includes the town, and was constituted in 1842. Acreage of the urban sanitary district, 1023; population, 11,847. The living is a rectory in the diocese of Lichfield; value, £320 with residence. Patron, the Rector of Kingswinford.

Administration

The following is a list of the administrative units in which this place was either wholly or partly included.

Any dates in this table should be used as a guide only.

Directories & Gazetteers

We have transcribed the entry for Brierley Hill from the following:

• Samuel Lewis' A Topographical Dictionary of England, by Samuel Lewis, seventh edition, published 1858. (Brierley-Hill)

Maps

Online maps of Brierley Hill are available from a number of sites:

• Bing (Current Ordnance Survey maps).
• Google Streetview.
• National Library of Scotland. (Old maps)
• OpenStreetMap.
• old-maps.co.uk (Old Ordnance Survey maps to buy).
• Streetmap.co.uk (Current Ordnance Survey maps).
• A Vision of Britain through Time. (Old maps)