Discovering Lower Ettingshall

The evening Summer Walk, on Thursday 8th June, will begin from the car park of Lanesfield Methodist Church in Laburnum Road, at 7:40 pm prompt. Your guide is local historian Trevor Genge.

The church can be approached from the Ettingshall Park Farm estate or the northbound carriageway of the Birmingham New Road. It is signposted.

Lower Ettingshall has a well documented industrial history. The area was worked for clay and coal leading to a Victorian bonanza in local tile, brick and iron production. Specialist brick making continued into the early C20th and the last iron and steel works closed in 1979.

A few landmark buildings, such as Rookery Hall [now The 44 Club], hint at past glories. Here the Lanes family lived in the first half of the C19th. Their name marks this part of the village - Lanesfield.

Today Lower Ettingshall’s past is cloaked in housing and industrial ‘parks’. The final remnants of this Black Country powerhouse will soon disappear leaving future generations to wonder about the rise and fall of nationally renowned firms.