A congregation growing with the town
St Michael’s stands above the town in a large churchyard. Built around 1765 by public subscription as a chapel of ease, it soon needed more room. Transepts were added in 1823 and another enlargement followed in 1837. The church’s repeated expansion records the demands of a growing community before the great Round Oak works began. [2]
Further rebuilding in 1900 extended the chancel and strengthened and recased the tower. Despite these changes, the building retained a classical core, with galleries carried on columns and round-headed arches. Its later alterations were not confined to ceremonial space: reordering in 1994 created side rooms and adapted the building for different uses. [2]
Canals and the works
The Delph flight linked the Dudley No. 1 Canal with the Stourbridge Canal. Its original nine locks were constructed in 1777–79; rebuilding in 1858 reduced the number to eight. The enduring name ‘Nine Locks’ preserves an earlier arrangement. The waterway was part of the industrial transport system through which this district exchanged heavy goods. [4] [5]
Round Oak Iron Works opened in 1857 under Richard Smith, the Earl of Dudley’s principal agent. It brought together resources from the estate’s mines, quarries and furnaces, using canal and railway connections to link extraction with manufacture. [3]
Dudley Archives holds the works’ wage books from 1866, recording names and weekly work, alongside departmental accounts, photographs and Pensnett Railway records. These documents reveal a working community as well as a company. [3]
Learning alongside industry
The Technical Institute and Public Library on Moor Street opened in 1904, combining a free library with training for local glass-industry apprentices. Andrew Carnegie contributed £2,000 towards the library, and the urban district council bore the remaining cost. Borough surveyor Lewis Harper designed the building; C. A. Horton built it. [6]
Its decoration gave practical education a public face. Historic England records surviving tiling, stained glass and original planning, including a staircase window representing the Fine Arts. A building intended for apprentices also offered books and reading to the wider community, bringing different kinds of learning together. [6]
Steel gives way to a different economy
As steel replaced wrought iron, Round Oak’s production changed. In 1936 the business adopted the name Round Oak Steel Works Ltd as iron and chain manufacture were discontinued. By 1977 Tube Investments and British Steel Corporation jointly owned it. Industrial continuity therefore concealed substantial changes in products and ownership. [7]
The works closed on 23 December 1982. Dudley Archives records around 1,300 redundancies and the sale of the site in March 1983 to Don and Roy Richardson. The former works became the Waterfront office development; adjoining Merry Hill Farm formed part of the larger redevelopment that included the shopping centre. The distinction between these sites matters when reading the new landscape. [3]
The High Street as a historical record
The High Street retained a separate civic and commercial identity through these changes. The council’s appraisal values the group of surviving shops, public buildings and industrial premises, their details and their relationship with open spaces. Conservation-area designation on 12 March 2009 recognised the town centre as evidence of economic and community development. [8]
More recent heritage work has also recorded living residents. The ‘100 Faces of Brierley Hill’ project brought together portraits and film in 2023 for preservation in Dudley Archives. Beside monuments to manufacture, these records keep a place for the people who continued to live in the town after its industrial transformation. [9]
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