Brierley Hill
Brierley Hill is a compact town and electoral ward of the Dudley Metropolitan Borough within the West Midlands of England. It is situated around 2.5 miles to the south of central Dudley and 2 miles north of Stourbridge. Brierley Hill was originally in Staffordshire, but is now a part of the West Midlands metropolitan county since its creation in 1974. A part of the Black Country, and in a heavily industrialised area of the Dudley Borough, it boasts a permanent resident population of about 14,000 inhabitants, as recorded in the 2011 census. Mostly created by the Industrial Revolution, Brierley Hill has a reasonably current history, with the initial written records of the town going back to the seventeenth century. Originally established as a settlement in the woodland of Pensnett Chase, it started to expand rapidly following 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 best identified for glass and steel manufacturing, though the industry has declined considerably since the 1970s. One of the biggest factories within the area was the Round Oak Steelworks, which was shut and renovated during the 1980s to become the Merry Hill Shopping Centre. The Merry Hill Shopping Centre is situated immediately east of Brierley Hill. One of the largest shopping centres in the country, it was constructed between 1985 and 1989 on the site of Merry Hill Farm, the final functioning urban farm within the West Midlands. Since 2008, Brierley Hill, including the neighbouring Waterfront Business Park and Merry Hill Shopping Centre, has been officially named the Strategic Town Centre of the Dudley Borough, with the aim to create a brand new town centre for the borough. For all your home improvement tasks, ensure that you work with reliable pros in Brierley Hill to ensure you get the very best quality service.