placehistory
County guide

West Midlands county

The metropolitan West Midlands brings together seven boroughs whose histories include Birmingham workshops, Black Country glass, Walsall leather, Coventry’s rebuilding and Solihull’s changing rural economy.

Watercolour and fine ink illustration of Birmingham Town Hall
Illustration · Birmingham Town Hall
Illustration credit

Illustration of Birmingham Town Hall, adapted from Birmingham Town Hall after refurbishment.jpg by Erebus555. CC BY-SA 3.0. AI-assisted watercolour and fine ink adaptation; cream paper margins, simplified fine detail and removal of incidental street clutter.

Landscape, people and change

A history of West Midlands

Seven boroughs within a larger region

Here West Midlands means the metropolitan county formed in the 1974 reorganisation: Birmingham, Coventry, Dudley, Sandwell, Solihull, Walsall and Wolverhampton. The contemporary parliamentary list records those seven districts under the new county name. This is a smaller area than the wider West Midlands region used elsewhere in geography and public administration. Places in neighbouring Warwickshire, Worcestershire or Staffordshire can share close economic and cultural connections without belonging to this county group. [9] [2]

The West Midlands Combined Authority is another distinct institution. Established in 2016 by the seven metropolitan councils, it enables joint decisions and collaboration across council boundaries. Its published explanation also includes non-constituent councils outside those seven boroughs. Those wider partnerships should not be read as an enlargement of the metropolitan county. The boroughs provide a clear geographical frame for exploring local histories that long predate either modern organisation. [2]

Birmingham: invention and the workshop

Soho House was Matthew Boulton’s home from 1766 to 1809. The house became a meeting place for the Lunar Society, whose participants included James Watt, Joseph Priestley, Erasmus Darwin and Josiah Wedgwood. Their meetings brought experiments and philosophical discussion into a domestic setting. Objects associated with the nearby Soho Manufactory include buttons and buckles as well as silver, clocks and vases: industrial Birmingham involved many products and forms of skilled work. [3]

The Museum of the Jewellery Quarter preserves a more intimate scale of manufacture. When the proprietors of Smith & Pepper retired in 1981, they closed their workshop with much of its contents still in place. Its survival allows working life to be explored through tools, workspaces and a specific firm. Together Soho House and this workshop suggest two useful scales for reading Birmingham’s history: networks of innovation and the repeated practical work of making individual objects. [4] [3]

Glass and leather: connected specialist trades

In the Stourbridge area, coal and fireclay attracted glassmakers seeking resources for their furnaces. Later glassmaking included highly decorated tableware and scientific products as well as more utilitarian goods. Dudley Council’s history records pressed glass at Wordsley in 1832 and the stimulus given by the abolition of glass excise in 1845. Thomas Webb & Sons drew skilled workers from Britain and Europe, including French painters and Bohemian engravers. The Glass Quarter connects local materials with travelling skills and wider markets. [6]

Walsall’s leather trades grew alongside an older specialism in metal fittings for horses, including bits, stirrups and buckles. Bridle makers could obtain these from local loriners. Expansion accelerated after 1840 and benefited from the railway’s arrival in 1847, but prosperity did not mean easy working lives. The Leather Museum describes long hours, low wages and particularly poor conditions for women. As engines displaced working horses, firms increasingly made lighter leather goods such as bags and wallets. [8]

Coventry: destruction and rebuilding

Coventry’s cathedral landscape records a major twentieth-century rupture. St Michael’s medieval parish church became a cathedral in 1918, then was devastated in the air raid of 14 November 1940. The decision to rebuild was taken immediately afterwards. The cathedral’s own history places reconciliation at the centre of that decision, connecting physical reconstruction with a wider response to war. The preserved ruins are consequently part of the story of rebuilding rather than simply an abandoned predecessor. [7]

A design competition in 1951 selected Basil Spence for the new cathedral, which was consecrated in 1962. Looking at the ruins alongside the modern building introduces another West Midlands theme: the ways towns and cities remade themselves after destruction. Coventry offers a different experience from a surviving workshop or glassmaking site, while remaining equally concerned with how communities preserve, interpret and change their built environment. [7]

Solihull: market, suburb and factory

Solihull’s history complicates any picture of an entirely industrial county. The town developed around St Alphege’s church, founded about 1220, and had a weekly market by 1242. It served scattered settlements in a wooded district. Farming, blacksmithing and the making of agricultural implements and hunting weapons supported its economy. The town and nearby Knowle formed separate local centres, a reminder that present borough boundaries enclose places with their own earlier patterns of settlement. [5]

In the late nineteenth century Solihull increasingly housed Birmingham industrialists and artisans. Villas and larger houses changed its rural appearance; twentieth-century estates and industry followed. Rover occupied a Lode Lane factory at the beginning of the Second World War. Starting with Solihull, Coventry, Birmingham, Walsall or Stourbridge therefore reveals different relationships between settlement and work. This metropolitan county brings those contrasting histories together without making them a single uniform story. [5] [7] [3] [8] [6]

Explore the area

This map shows the county browsing area used by PlaceHistory. Historic county boundaries and present-day councils can differ.

County browsing areaWest MidlandsInteractive map loads when this area enters view.
County browsing area · Geographic source
Keep exploring

Local histories in West Midlands

45 researched histories to explore.

Ordered by place name.

Sources & further reading

  1. What is the West Midlands Combined Authority? · West Midlands Combined Authority
  2. About Soho House · Birmingham Museums
  3. About the Museum of the Jewellery Quarter · Birmingham Museums
  4. Solihull town history · Solihull Metropolitan Borough Council
  5. Stourbridge Glass Quarter: History · Dudley Council
  6. Our history · Coventry Cathedral
  7. A history of the leather industry in Walsall · Walsall Leather Museum
  8. District Councils and Boroughs, 28 March 1974 · UK Parliament, Hansard
  9. ONS December 2025 administrative boundaries

Last researched 2026-10-27. How we research our histories.