Oldbury is a town in Sandwell, West Midlands in England. It is a part of the Black Country, and the administrative centre of the borough of Sandwell. The town's name comes from the Old English 'Ealdenbyrig', which signifies that Oldbury was old even in early English times over 1000 years ago. Eald is Old English for 'old', and Byrig is the plural of 'burh' in Old English, with a burh being a stronghold or fortified town. In accordance with the 2011 Census, the town has a permanent population of around 13606 people. Oldbury was part of the ancient parish of Halesowen, a detached part of Shropshire surrounded by Worcestershire and Staffordshire, until the Counties (Detached Parts) Act 1844, when it was incorporated back into Worcestershire after an absence of nine-hundred years. It ended up being an Urban District in 1894, receiving Municipal Borough status in 1935. In this time, Oldbury council built a few thousand homes, flats and cottages for some 40 years up until its dissolution, the 1000th of which was finished in 1933 at Wallace Road near the border with Rowley Regis. Since the 1980s, the town has actually seen sustained expansion, particularly the creation of more retail options. This features Oldbury Green Retail Park, situated on the town's ring road, which was built in the middle of the 1990s. This, together with the development of the Merry Hill Shopping Centre discovered about six miles away through the 2nd half of the 1980s, has added to a decrease in the functioning of close-by West Bromwich town centre as a retail centre for locals. For all your home refurbishments, make sure to identify credible contractors in Oldbury to make certain of quality.