A farming settlement around a parish church
Medieval Aldridge’s farmers worked strips in shared open fields, including those remembered as Brantial, Daniel, Middlemore and Wetstone. The parish church was part of this rural settlement long before the later collieries. Its own history establishes that a church with a subsidiary chapel at Great Barr existed before 1257, while leaving its precise foundation uncertain. [2] [3]
St Mary the Virgin also records nineteenth-century rebuilding. The parish account says that, apart from the tower, the exterior walls were added or rebuilt between 1841 and 1853. Limestone in the foundations and tower may have been reused from an earlier church. Further changes in 1991 and 1995 replaced pews and choir stalls with chairs and movable chancel furniture, adapting an inherited building to modern worship. [3]
Transport and the mineral landscape
Poor roads had limited heavier industry. Canals opened between 1803 and 1847, followed by railways serving coal mines and brick and tile works. At Hay Head Wood, shafts, engine supports and five lime kilns preserve traces of works abandoned in 1870. The remains connect Aldridge’s minerals with the transport needed to move them. [2]
A contemporary industrial directory gives a sharper view of the mining workforce. The 1933 Colliery Year Book, transcribed by Durham Mining Museum, lists 786 underground and 236 surface employees at Aldridge No 1 pit. It also says No 2 was temporarily suspended under the coal quota system. Those figures describe a particular company and year, not the whole district’s workforce, but show how many livelihoods depended on a single operation. [4]
The council’s history records hardship when local mines closed during the 1930s. Industrial development had created employment, but dependence on coal also exposed households to the consequences of contraction. The suspended pit in the 1933 directory captures part of that insecurity while mining was still continuing. [2] [4]
An airfield with physical limits
Walsall Council bought Aldridge Lodge and 220 acres of its estate in 1930. An aerodrome followed and was licensed in 1938. Wet clay ground and the size of the site restricted its suitability for larger aircraft. It closed in 1956, leaving land subsequently used for public recreation. A venture in modern transport therefore became a substantial open space. [7]
The airfield was also a place of work. The Airfields of Britain Conservation Trust records Helliwells Ltd and the Walsall Aero Club among its associated organisations, alongside gliding units. The site combined the presence of a commercial firm with recreational flying and training. [8]
Building a congregation from a cinema lounge
Aldridge’s Catholic parish history begins its local campaign with twenty men meeting in 1939 and agreeing weekly contributions of a shilling. Permission was obtained to hold Sunday Mass in the upstairs lounge of the Avion Cinema on Anchor Road. The Franciscan logbook records the opening of the Mass centre on 8 October 1939. A commercial entertainment building temporarily supplied a religious community’s meeting place. [5]
The congregation later used a house and then a purpose-built church-hall opened in 1949. Taking Stock links the decision to build a larger church with Aldridge’s expected population and industrial growth. Eric Farmer designed St Mary of the Angels, built by local firm A J Downes & Sons; work began in 1961 and it was blessed in 1964. Its tall campanile became a new landmark in an expanding settlement. [6]
Rebuilding the centre
After the Second World War, housing and industrial estates accommodated people and businesses moving from Birmingham. A modern shopping centre replaced older High Street shops and cottages. Aldridge joined Brownhills administratively in 1966 and became part of Walsall Metropolitan Borough in 1974. The modern centre belongs to this period of suburban growth and reorganisation. [2]
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