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Dudley (About this sound pronunciation (help·info)) is a large town in the West Midlands, England, with a population of 194,919. Since 1974 it has been the administrative centre of the wider Metropolitan Borough of Dudley; the original County Borough had undergone a lesser expansion in 1966. It is the 19th largest settlement in England[citation needed] measured by Urban Sub-Area, the second largest town in the United Kingdom, behind Reading  and the largest settlement in the UK without its own university.

Dudley is part of the West Midlands conurbation, and is located south of Wolverhampton. It is the largest town in the Black Country. For many years the town (but not the castle) formed part of an exclave of Worcestershire entirely surrounded by Staffordshire - which has determined the fact that, in ecclesiastical terms, it has remained part of the Anglican Diocese of Worcester.

History

Dudley has a history dating back to medieval times. Dudley Castle has stood on a hill overlooking the town since the 11th century, and is mentioned in the Domesday Book. The present castle dates from the 13th century, and provided the centre around which the town grew. Dating from the 12th century are the ruins of St James Priory, set within the Priory Park.

Dudley Castle

The town industrialised rapidly in the 18th and 19th centuries, and its population grew dramatically. Due to its heavy and highly polluting industries it became a central part of the Black Country. The main industries in Dudley included coal and limestone mining. Other industries included iron, steel, engineering, metallurgy, glass cutting, textiles and leatherworking. Most of these industries have declined in recent decades.

Of historical significance, the first Newcomen steam engine was installed at the Conygree coalworks a mile east of Dudley Castle in 1712.

Dudley was a predominantly rural town as recently as the early 18th century, after which the Industrial Revolution saw many factories and coalpits open up around the town as well as houses for the workers to live in were being built. Further development took place in the 19th century.

However, many of the houses built for industrial workers in Dudley were in a sub standard condition by the turn of the 20th century and mass demolition of the town centre slums began in the 1920s, accelerating in the 1930s. The occupants of the slums were rehoused on modern council housing developments including the large Priory and Wren's Nest housing estates as well as smaller developments in areas such as Woodside and Kates Hill. Substantial private housing was built at this time as well.

During World War II, Dudley was bombed on several occasions, with a number of fatalities, though nowhere near as severely as its near neighbour Birmingham.

The first major council housing development was the Priory Estate, where more than 2,000 houses were built between 1929 and 1939. The Wrens Nest Estate followed soon afterwards. It stands in the shadow of Wrens Nest Hill, where many Silurian fossils can be found including crinoids, corals and trilobites.

The Castle Hill area of the town was heavily developed for entertainment attractions in the first 40 years of the 20th century. An Opera House was opened there in 1899, followed a year later by the Station Hotel (rebuilt in the 1930s) opposite. The Opera House was destroyed by fire in December 1936 and replaced by a Plaza cinema. By this stage, a Hippodrome Theatre opened next door. An Odeon cinema opened on the opposite side of the road at around the same. However, the postwar decline in cinema and theatre attendance - brought on by the rising popularity of home television - affected the area greatly. The Hippodrome closed in 1966, and has been used for several purposes - most recently by Gala Bingo. The Odeon closed in 1976 and was converted into a Jehovah's Witnesses Kingdom hall. The Plaza closed in 1990 and was briefly used as a Laser Quest laserdome until its demolition in 1997.

After the war was over, thousands of sub standard properties remained, and the clearance and rehousing continued in the 1950s and was almost complete by the early 1960s. The postwar years saw the development of further new council housing estates including Russells Hall and Old Park Farm. The 1960s saw the construction of 11 multi storey blocks of council flats in Dudley - the tallest three of them at Eve Hill, and smaller blocks at Grange Park, Queens Cross and Netherton.

The nearby village of Lower Gornal was the epicentre for the Dudley earthquake of 2002, the largest earthquake to hit the United Kingdom in nearly 10 years.

The town centre is a mix of old and modern buildings, with some surviving from as far back as the 18th century, while others were built in the second half of the 20th century. Modern shopping developments include the Churchill Shopping Preicint (opened in 1969 and named after the late prime minister Sir Winston Churchill who died four years earlier) and the indoor Trident Centre which opened around the same time. The Churchill Shopping Preicint was originally an open-air centre owned and run by the local council, only to be sold to a private company in 1991 - within two years a substantial refurishment of the preicint had been completed, which included a roof being fitted.

Most of the town's multiple stores were situated on Market Place and High Street. However, the development of the Merry Hill Shopping Centre four miles away at Brierley Hill during the second half of the 1980s saw most of the multiple stores (including Marks and Spencer and British Home Stores) relocate from Dudley and predominantly replaced by discount stores. The financial crisis and recession which has hit Britain and most of the rest of the world since 2007 has resulted in many of the retail units in Dudley town centre becoming vacant. The Woolworths store on Market Place closed in December 2008 when the company went bankrupt, and has been replaced by an indoor market, though few of the other stores which became vacant around the same time have been reoccupied.

Civic history

By the end of the thirteenth century, Dudley had become a manorial borough .Before 1791, Dudley was governed by the Court Leet of the Lords of Dudley. Between 1791 and 1852, the Town Commissioners were the principal local authority. The Town Commissioners were superseded in 1853 by the Board of Health. Dudley became a municipal borough in 1865. In 1889, it became a County Borough. The County Borough of Dudley included the town of Dudley and the villages of Woodside and Netherton. In the 1961 census, the County Borough had a population of 62,965.

Dudley's Council House in Priory Road was opened in 1935 by King George V. It was financed by the then Earl of Dudley, William Humble Eric Ward, who stipulated that when the Mayor is seated at the head of the council chamber he should have a direct line of sight to Dudley Castle once all the chamber doors are thrown open (Source: 'Dudley's Little Book of Big History', Dudley MBC publication, 2008)

In 1966, the county borough was expanded to include the majority of the urban district councils of Brierley Hill and Sedgley, about half of Coseley along with small areas of Amblecote and Rowley Regis, as well as a fragment of rural Seisdon. As the majority of these areas were part of Staffordshire, Dudley was transferred from Worcestershire to the county of Staffordshire. Part of the Oakham area of the town was transferred into Warley County Borough. These changes meant that the population of Dudley County Borough at the time of the 1971 census increased to 185,592; an increase of almost 300% from the 1961 figure.

Dudley's borough boundaries were further expanded in 1974 to become a Metropolitan Borough, having taken in the boroughs of Halesowen and Stourbridge (both formerly in Worcestershire). This meant a further increase in population, which by the time of the 1981 census was 298,511 - an increase of five times the population of only twenty years before.

Since 1974, Dudley has been part of the West Midlands county.

Places of interest

The ruins of Dudley Priory.

The town is home to Dudley Zoo, and the Black Country Living Museum. Visitors to the museum may also take a narrowboat  trip from the adjacent canal, through the Dudley Tunnel. The ruined Dudley Castle is within the grounds of the zoo, and there is an extensive wooded  ridge that runs north from the castle. Dudley Zoo is to be regenerated under proposals by Dudley Zoo in partnership with Dudley Council, St Modwen and Advantage West Midlands, which will see a former freightliner site redeveloped with a tropical dome, Asiatic forest, two aquatic facilities and walkthrough aviaries. It is expected to cost £38.7 million.

Dudley is home to a former Odeon Cinema and a former music hall, the Dudley Hippodrome, both from the Art Deco period in the 1930s. The Dudley Hippodrome was built on to the side of the now-demolished Opera House (built in 1900 and burnt down in 1936) and is now a bingo hall. There is a Showcase Cinema in a retail park between the zoo and museum.

Sculpture on a plinth at Showcase Cinema, Dudley

The Odeon Cinema became an Assembly Hall for the Jehovah's Witnesses in 1976 for the West Midlands Area.

The Plaza Cinema was built on Castle Hill in 1938 next to the Hippodrome, and remained open until October 1990. The building was then taken over by Laser Quest, who used it until it was demolished in 1997. The site of the cinema remains undeveloped.

Since the 1970s, there has been a nightclub on Castle Hill situated on the corner of Station Drive; this has changed ownership several times since first opening.

Dudley Art Deco Cinema

There are many canals in and around Dudley, the main one being the Dudley Canal - most of which passes beneath Dudley in a tunnel which lacks a towpath and is therefore accessible only by boat.

The open sections of canal are popular with walkers, cyclists, fishermen, and narrowboat users. Many of the canalside towpaths have been upgraded for cycling, and some sections are part of the National Cycle Network.

The Wren's Nest National Nature Reserve is a site of special scientific interest (SSSI) considered to be one of the most notable geological locations in the British Isles and home to the Calymene blumenbachi trilobite nicknamed the Dudley Bug or Dudley Locust by 18th century quarrymen. Dudley Museum and Art Gallery has a large collection of its well-preserved Silurian coral reef fossils, plus numerous displays relating to the history of the town.

Established in 1260, Dudley Market in Dudley town centre is a major shopping area for the town. It has undergone numerous developments in its history. One major development was in 1982 when the area was pedestrianised and the 12th century cobblestones were removed. Other developments have included the addition of a new roof and new toilet facilities, with the new ground level block having replaced underground toilets in the early 1990s.

Dudley is also the location of several churches. These include the Church of St. Edmund, Church of St. James, and Church of St. Thomas.

The old St Edmund's Church School, a 19th century building near the town centre, was closed in 1970 on a merger with St John's Church School on Kates Hill, and later converted into a mosque for the town's growing Islamic community, which is mostly concentrated around Kates Hill, Queen's Cross, Eve Hill and The Buffery.

St James's Church at Eve Hill also had a church school from the mid 19th century, but this was closed during the 1970s and was used as a community centre for several years before being transferred to the Black Country Museum in 1989. The site of the school remained vacant until 2008, when work began on a new health centre that is due to open by 2010.

Proposed Mosque

During the mid 2000s, plans were unveiled for the construction of a new mosque on the site of a derelict factory near the Dudley Southern By-Pass. The idea of this new facility has been in the pipeline since Muslim leaders declared the current facility at Castle Hill too small for the congregation. The current site, formally St Edmunds School House is a grade II listed building, with little scope of adaption. The current mosque on Castle Hill, a converted school, has capacity for around 470 worshippers. The new mosque will increase the capacity to 750 worshipers, with a separate area for women accommodating 300 worshippers in the balcony. Underground parking has been added to the plans following consultation with local residents. The plans were shelved in early 2007 by request of Dudley Council, amid fears of racial tension in the forthcoming elections, but were revived a year later, and the controversy over the proposed mosque has attracted much heated debate from many quarters, as well as national media attention. Local residents fear the sheer size of the mosque will upset the infrastructure of the town centre and cause major traffic problems.

The proposed location of the mosque is on part of the site of the former Goodyear Tire and Rubber factory, which closed in the early 1990s and was demolished soon after, with the bulk of the site being occupied by the Dudley Southern By-Pass which opened in 1999. The application for outline planning permission was recommend by approval by council officers, but then rejected by the elected officials of Dudley Council's development control committee in 2007. The following year outline planning was granted on appeal to the Planning Inspectorate. Dudley Council appealed against the decision and the case was heard at the High Court in July 2009. In March to April 2010, there were many arguments about building the Mosque. There was a big protest in Dudley Town Centre about the argument.

After high court action, which cost taxpayers around £16,000; the appeal from Dudley council was rejected, with the hearing finishing mid afternoon, on the first day of a predicted two day hearing In July 2009 the judge backed plans for the mosque and community centre to be built on the condition that it will be open to all members of the community. The Planning Inspectorate also stated it should be “accessible and available to the whole community.” The completion cost is estimated to be ₤18 Million.

Dudley Mosque is a strong member of the Dudley Borough Interfaith Network who have posted a Fact-Check about the proposed Mosque. Black Country Church leaders have called for Wisdom and Grace in peoples response to the mosque.

The controversy over the proposed Mosque has attracted attention from the English Defence League, who protested in Dudley on the 4 April 2010 against the proposed construction of a new Mosque. Dudley Council have estimated the total cost to the taxpayer of the EDL protest at £500,000, and a loss of trade of £250,000 by local traders. Despite violence by EDL protesters, and a break-out from the protest area, the massive police operation was able to contain the protesters, with Police hailing the operation a success. The leaders of all the elected political parties in Dudley joined together to condemn the protest, and ask the EDL to stay away, and faith leaders joined with leaders from the Voluntary Sector, Council, Police and Fire in signing a 'One Borough Pledge', committing to continue working together for the benefit of the local community.

Politics
National government

Dudley is covered by two parliamentary constituencies, Dudley South and Dudley North, which also represent some other towns within the Metropolitan Borough of Dudley. The current MPs elected from these seats and to the House of Commons are Ian Pearson and Ian Austin respectively. Both represent the Labour party.

Local Government

Dudley Metropolitan Borough Council is a 4-star unitary authority run by the Conservative Party. The Leader of the Council is Cllr Anne Millward.

In May 2009, there was condemnation of councillors for voting themselves a 25% increase in their expenses and allowances.

Other

Law enforcement in Dudley is carried out by the West Midlands Police and fire and rescue by the West Midlands Fire Service.

Dudley Police Station is situated on New Street, in a building that opened in 1939 to replace a 19th century structure on Priory Street which now forms part of the local council offices.

The Fire Station is situated on Burton Road, where it relocated to from a 1930s building on Tower Street. Part of the current site was previously occupied by Burton Road Hospital.

The current Ambulance Station was opened in the late 1980s on Burton Road, on part of land that formed the site of the hospital six years before its demolition.

Libraries

In 2008 Dudley Council commenced a project it called "modernisation", but was widely regarded as a closure programme. As a result five libraries: Quarry Bank, Dudley Wood, Amblecote, Wall Heath and Woodside were closed.

Transport
Rail

The nearest railway stations are all a mile or more from Dudley town centre; Tipton railway station and Dudley Port railway station are served by local services operated by London Midland, and Sandwell and Dudley railway station which is served by both local London Midland services and Virgin Trains West Coast services from London Euston to Wolverhampton.

Dudley railway station, in the town of Dudley itself, opened in 1850, and closed under the Beeching Axe in 1964. In its heyday it was a hub of services east to Birmingham (via a junction at Great Bridge), Walsall and Lichfield; north to Wolverhampton, Tipton and Coseley; and south-west to Stourbridge, as well as a line that served the small communities on the way to Old Hill and Halesowen. This site was then used as a Freightliner terminal by Freightliner UK until an unpopular closure on the 26 September 1989.

Both of the town's railway stations (Dudley and Blowers Green) were closed in 1962 under the Beeching Axe, although the line through Dudley remained open to goods trains until 1993. In the early 2010s the town is set to regain a rail link for the first time in almost half a century when an extension to the Midland Metro opens between Brierley Hill and Wednesbury, although the Midland Metro is a Light Rail system, and does not feature through ticketing to the national rail network.

Bus

There is a large bus station on the outskirts of the town centre which has many connections to surrounding towns and communities, including: Bilston, Birmingham, Brierley Hill, Coseley, Cradley Heath, Gornal, Halesowen, Kingswinford, Merry Hill Shopping Centre, Oldbury, Pensnett, Rowley Regis, Sedgley, Smethwick, Stourbridge, Tipton, Wall Heath, Walsall, Wednesbury, West Bromwich, Wolverhampton, Wombourne and Wordsley.

From the end of April 2008, the new Dudley Bus Network is coming into effect. This is seeing the withdrawal of several bus routes as well the introduction of several others. Those which are not changing are seeing several timetable changes.

The bus station also sees limited service from National Express, whose services call at the bus station mostly for London or Wolverhampton. Other places served include holiday destination Blackpool and London Heathrow and London Gatwick Airports. There is also a bus station at Russells Hall Hospital.

The town has been served by a bus station at the junction of Birmingham Street and Fisher Street since 1952. The original bus station was cleared in 1984 and replaced by the current bus station which became fully operational in 1987.

Originally, Midland Red operated bus services in the town, mostly from its own bus depot, which opened in 1929. This depot was located on Birmingham Road and passed to West Midlands Passenger Transport Executive in 1973, along with operation of all bus services in Dudley. The depot itself was closed in 1993 and demolished a year later to make way for the Castle Gate roundabout at the eastern end of the town's new southern by-pass. The island was built in 1997 and the by-pass opened on 15 October 1999.

Road

Dudley itself is well-served by main roads which give a direct route to neighbouring towns. The longest of these roads are the B4176 (which runs to Wombourne, Bridgnorth and Telford) and the A461 (which passes through Wednesbury and Walsall, finally reaching Lichfield).

Air

The nearest international airport is Birmingham International Airport, around 25 miles to the east. The nearest local airport is Wolverhampton Airport, which is about 10 miles to the west of the town.