The History of Smethwick

The next meeting of the Society takes place on Thursday 8th March at 7:30 pm in St. Andrew’s Church, Bilston Street, Sedgley.

The speaker is Mary Bodfish, a favourite with local history groups and Chairman of Smethwick Local History Society.

Mary’s illustrated talk follows the rich history of a Domesday village that flourished to become a Victorian boom-town and later a C20th borough of continuous change.

The evening is an ideal opportunity to hear about the fluctuating fortunes of a town once echoing from the noises made by Bouton and Watt’s famous Soho foundry and Chance Brothers huge glassworks.

Today Smethwick is in the news because completion of the massive Midland Metropolitan Hospital has been pushed back by the collapse of Carillion.

As usual visitors are invited to come along – cost £1.

2017/18 – Autumn / Winter Teaser

We asked you to identify this item, which is now found in museum settings, but hundreds of these were commonplace for over seventy years.

From 1900 the horseshoe magnet badge of Wolverhampton District Electric Tramways Limited emblazoned tram pole bases. The same poles later carried the overhead power for trolley buses on the Wolverhampton to Dudley route from 1925 to March 1967. They were still in use in the early 1970s as street lighting standards.