Brierley Hill is a small town and electoral ward of the Dudley Metropolitan Borough within the West Midlands of England. It is situated about 2.5 miles south of central Dudley and 2 miles to the north of Stourbridge. Brierley Hill was traditionally in Staffordshire, but is now part of the West Midlands metropolitan county ever since its creation in 1974. Part of the Black Country, and within a heavily industrialised area of the Dudley Borough, it boasts a resident population of about 14,000 residents, as recorded in the 2011 census. Primarily created by the Industrial Revolution, Brierley Hill features a reasonably current history, with the very first written records of the town going back to the seventeenth century. First created as a settlement in the woodland of Pensnett Chase, it began to expand rapidly after the chase's enclosure in 1748, and was first recorded on a map in 1785 after the mapping of the Stourbridge Canal. The town is primarily famous for glass and steel manufacturing, though the business has declined considerably since the 1970s. On the list of the biggest factories within the area was the Round Oak Steelworks, which was closed down and redeveloped during the 1980s to be transformed into the Merry Hill Shopping Centre. The Merry Hill Shopping Centre is located immediately to the east of Brierley Hill. One of the biggest shopping centres in the United Kingdom, it was built between 1985 and 1989 on the site of Merry Hill Farm, the final working urban farm in the West Midlands. Since 2008, Brierley Hill, including the close by Waterfront Business Park and Merry Hill Shopping Centre, has been designated as the Strategic Town Centre of the Dudley Borough, with the aim to make a new town centre for the borough. For all of your home improvements, be sure that you pick trusted professionals in Brierley Hill to ensure you get the top quality service.