West Bromwich Industry in 1859

WEST BROMWICH;  This place, which is in the centre of an extensive manufacturing and mining district, has, within a few years, risen with amazing rapidity from a state of comparative insignificance to a degree of importance, for the variety and extent of its manufactures and trade, which is almost unparalleled. The rich mines of iron-stone and coal beneath the soil, in almost every direction, affording the utmost facility of establishing works upon a large scale, attracted the notice of the enterprising and ingenious; and, from little more than a barren heath, a populous and flourishing village has risen, extending for more than three miles along the high road from Birmingham to Wolverhampton.

Among the various branches of manufacture, all of which are conducted on the most extensive scale, are gun and pistol barrels and locks, swords, bayonets, fenders, fire-irons, locks, bolts, hinges, nails, saddlers' ironmongery, coach-furniture; iron culinary utensils, chains, traces, spades and other implements of husbandry, steel toys, gas-tubes and fittings, palisades, and ornamental ironwork: among the larger works are blast furnaces for the smelting of iron-ore, foundries, forges, rolling and slitting mills, in which, and also in the various collieries, many stearn-engines are employed.

Very extensive gasworks have been established by a company of proprietors, from which part of Birmingham, seven miles distant, is lighted, and from which the different towns of Wednesbury, Dudley, Bilston, Darlaston, Tipton, and Great Bridge, are also supplied with gas. There is a large glass-manufactory employing several hundred workmen. The trade of the place, and the transport of the produce of its mines and the heavier articles of manufacture, are greatly facilitated by the numerous branches of canals which intersect the parish; and the Grand Junction railway also passes through it.

 

[Description(s) from The Topographical Dictionary of England (1859) by Samuel Lewis - Transcribed by Mike Harbach ©2020]