SMBC/WM 2007.04 smethwick Canals scything through SMETHWICK HERITAGE CENTRE a scattered hamlet of nailmakers “Excellent exhibition, brings back memories of Smethwick 50 years ago” and blacksmiths created walk a Victorian boom town from SMETHWICK LIBRARY “A truly beautiful building, the stained glass window smethwick where steam engines, stained is a delight to the eye” heritage trail glass, ceramics and lighthouses WARLEY WOODS PARK & GOLF COURSE were sent to all four corners of “I am absolutely thrilled at the new pathways and the world. The people of overall regeneration of the woods”

Smethwick today are as richly VICTORIA PARK diverse as the engineering “I've lived around this area all my life and still enjoy products of their proud industrial my daily visit to this beautiful park” heritage. GALTON VALLEY HERITAGE CENTRE “An excellent introduction to the area’s canals and To the local Anglo Saxon farmers this was “the level our industrial past” land where cows graze”. Mentioned in the Domesday survey of 1086, metalworkers were busy here in the 16th century. The canals of the Industrial Revolution attracted large-scale manufacturing, bringing with it a population explosion. Smethwick SMETHWICK called itself “the workshop of the world”, and Directions: amongst its huge range of products were Tangye’s Metro info: pumps and hydraulic engines, Guest, Keen & tel: 0121 254 7272 Nettlefolds screws, nuts and bolts, Phillips’s web: www.travelmetro.co.uk bicycles, Camm’s stained glass windows, Ruskin art Bus and rail info: pottery, Scribans’s cakes and biscuits, Mitchells & Traveline: 0870 608 2608 Centro Hotline: 0121 200 2700 Butler’s beer and Mason’s pop. Chance Brothers web: www.centro.org.uk made 1.25 million ft2 (140,000 m2) of glass for the National Rail: 08457 48 49 50 Crystal Palace which housed the Great Exhibition Birmingham International Airport: of 1851, as well as the glass for the clock face of tel: 08707 335511

Big Ben at the Houses of Parliament. web: www.bhx.co.uk1and KE 12

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O M L M Y U IT K A T C C H W D R U A E B R D T E M S O Y ROAD O R U UR R T DB O H L OLD F O BURY ROAD RO A L A 4 E D M 57 4 T A sites and L S L L T E I A N NE WISH M L’S RO A R PAU AD L D E H B L T attractions key 41 S A T 6 T N N S 9 O U CA O L M T H A L H S D W G A H S IN O E O M E R 6 S IR S U A B G Y E H S Smethwick Library, High Street T R I R D 1 E N G E I T B P H E A R A S 5 L M T 7 B E R Y R T C K L E REE L E ST R T FE D O ROL 2 Guru Nanak Sikh Temple, High Street H W 3 AY 57 E SOHO WAY A4 N A L 3 The Toll House, 115 High Street Y 1 N O T S 2 © Crown copyright. All rights reserved. Sandwell MBC Licence No. 100032119 2007 4 Galton Bridge, Roebuck Lane

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Smethwick Guru Nanak The Toll House Library Sikh Temple The main road through Smethwick became part of the Birmingham, Dudley and Wolverhampton turnpike in 1760. Originally built in 1866 as a public hall, the library has also Originally built in 1855 as a Congregational Church, the The original toll house stood on the corner of Stony Lane, with been used as an employment exchange. The conversion to building was acquired in the early 1960s by the Sikh the gate running diagonally across the crossroads. The present library purposes in the 1920s included the installation of an community who converted it to the Guru Nanak Gurdwara. toll house, built around 1818, was in use until the road was attractive stained glass window. The building was extensively At the time of its opening it was the largest Sikh Temple dis-turnpiked and the gates removed at midnight on renovated in 1984 and it now includes the Community outside India. 31st October 1876. In more recent memory the house History & Archives Service. was used as a hat shop and an artist’s studio.

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Galton Bridge Smethwick New Galton Valley Once the world’s longest single span bridge, over what was once Pumping Station Heritage Centre the world’s largest man-made excavation, Thomas Telford’s 1829 world famous cast iron bridge continues to impress and astound Built in 1892 to house two big steam engines continuously Celebrating the world’s first canal “motorway” and the town walkers and boaters alike through its location, architecture and pumping water from the low new main line canal to the old main and industry that grew up around it, the Galton Valley Heritage perfect fit into this man-made landscape. line canal, the Pumping Station closed in 1921 as Britain’s canal Centre is the ideal place to start your exploration of the history, traffic transferred to the railways. Derelict and abandoned during archaeology, ecology, architecture and everything else that most of the 20th century, the Pumping Station was restored in goes to make the Galton Valley one of the most fascinating the 1980s and 1990s and now is home to preserved steam environments in the West Midlands. engines and boilers salvaged from across Britain.

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Smethwick The Council Smethwick Engine House House Heritage Centre Home from 1779 to 1892 to a steam engine built by James Designed by local architect Frederick Gill and built 1905-07, Situated in Victoria Park, the Lodge was opened as a Heritage Watt, able to transfer 1500 buckets worth of water every the interior contains good examples of art nouveau design. The Centre in 2003 by the Smethwick Heritage Centre Trust. Since minute to the top of a flight of locks, the Smethwick Engine Smethwick coat-of-arms over the doorway displays the motto its opening the Centre has received full Accreditation from the improved the capacity of the Birmingham to Wolverhampton “Labore et Ingenio” (Work and Genius), being that of James Museums, Libraries & Archives Council. On display are examples canal from 50 to 250 boats per week. Believed uneconomic to Watt in reverse. In the entrance hall are memorials to two of products manufactured in Smethwick by many of its famous repair in the 1890s Smethwick Engine House was replaced by Smethwick men awarded the Vicotoria Cross and to the first companies which have now closed. Also displayed are various the New Pumping Station in 1892 and disappeared under new British soldier to die in the D-Day landings in 1944. items from numerous Smethwick Schools, Churches, Sporting factory building until its rediscovery and excavation by and Leisure organisations and other aspects of past Smethwick archaeologists in 1984. life, together with many photographs of Old Smethwick.

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Warley Woods Park Victoria Park The Old Church & Golf Course Warley Woods, Park and Golf Course together form a unique, In 1886 the Chairman, Arthur Keen, of the Board of the The oldest surviving building in Smethwick, this classical style beautiful and much-loved open space in the south of Smethwick. It contains remnants of ancient oak and beech Smethwick Urban District Council, proposed that it was church was consecrated in 1732 after Dorothy Parkes, a woodland, overlaid by a bold landscaping plan created in the desirable to provide for the use of the inhabitants of Smethwick, wealthy spinster, left money in the hands of trustees to build a early 19th century by renowned designer Humphry Repton, for public paths and pleasure gardens and that Pool Farm in chapel, vicarage and charity school. The Chapel was later the Galton family of Birmingham gun-makers. In 1906 those Bearwood Road would be ideal. The farm was purchased in known as “The Old Chapel” and the public house next to it is parts of Warley Woods that had not already been built over 1887 for £6,500 and opened to the public as a park in 1889. still called this. There are memorials to several notable were saved by the combined efforts of local people led by the Since 1999 Sandwell MBC has successfully obtained funding Smethwick families in the Church. to begin regeneration of the park and further improvements are Smethwick glass-maker Alexander Chance. Warley Woods then scheduled for 2007. became one of the area’s finest urban parks.