Oldbury is a market town in the Metropolitan Borough of Sandwell, West Midlands, England. It is the administrative centre of the borough. At the 2011 census, the town had a population of 13,606, while the 2017 population of the wider built-up area was estimated at 25,488. Sandwell Metropolitan Borough Council, which defines Oldbury Town as consisting of the wards of Bristnall, Langley, Oldbury, and Old Warley, gave the population as 50,641 in 2011.
Etymology
The place name Oldbury, comes from the Old English 'Ealdenbyrig', – signifying that Oldbury was old even in early English times over 1,000 years ago. Eald being Old English for 'old', Byrig is the plural of 'burh' in Old English – a burh being a fortification or fortified town.
History
Oldbury was part of the ancient parish of Halesowen, a detached part of Shropshire surrounded by Worcestershire and Staffordshire. After the dissolution of the monasteries, Henry VIII gave Hales Owen manor including Oldbury to Sir John Dudley. In 1555, Sir John's son Robert sold most of Hales Owen manor but retained Oldbury and Langley which became a separate manor. Thus Sir Robert Dudley became the first Lord of the Manor of Oldbury. Oldbury manor was held by several families thereafter with the land gradually being sold off and the manorial functions dispersed. The last Lord of Oldbury Manor was Patrick Allan Fraser.
Pigot and Co.'s National Commercial Directory for 1828-9 describes Oldbury as a village in Shropshire with close trade and manufacturing links to Dudley and Stourbridge. It notes the importance of the iron trade with its "considerable blast furnaces, for making pig iron" and states "there are also steel works; and coal and iron-stone abound in the vicinity". Mention is made of a debtors' prison, and a court-house which held a fortnightly Court of Requests for recovery of debts not exceeding five pounds.
The first branch of Lloyds Bank was opened in Oldbury in 1864. The branch was founded to serve fellow Quakers Arthur Albright and John Wilson's local chemical factory. The original building survives, but the Lloyds bank branch closed around 2005.
Local government
By the Counties (Detached Parts) Act 1844, Oldbury was reincorporated into Worcestershire after a nine-hundred-year absence.
In 1894, Oldbury became an Urban District, based at the Municipal Buildings and in 1935 the area gained Municipal Borough-status. Oldbury council built several thousand houses, flats and bungalows for 40 years from 1893 until its disbandment, the 1,000th of which was completed in 1933 at Wallace Road near the border with Rowley Regis.
The Municipal Borough of Oldbury was merged with the County Borough of Smethwick and the Municipal Borough of Rowley Regis in 1966 to form the County Borough of Warley.
In 1974, Oldbury became part of the new Sandwell Metropolitan Borough (a merger between the county boroughs of West Bromwich and Warley), and was transferred from Worcestershire into the new West Midlands Metropolitan County. Since 1986, after the abolition of the West Midlands County Council, Sandwell effectively became a unitary authority. Sandwell Council's headquarters are in Oldbury town centre.
Industry and commerce
The town has seen a large expansion in retail since 1980. In October 1980, JSainsbury opened one of its first SavaCentre hypermarkets in Oldbury town centre. Twenty years later, it was rebranded as a traditional Sainsbury's store as the SavaCentre side of the business was phased out. A Toys "R" Us superstore at Birchley Island opened in October 1988 but the retail chain went out of business in 2018. Oldbury Green Retail Park was built next to the town's ring road in the mid-1990s. Homebase relocated there from its 1980s purpose-built store, which Gala Bingo subsequently took over.
Due to the socio-economics of Sandwell, the area has a number of social housing organisations such as Black Country Housing Group which has been operating in Sandwell since its relocation from Birmingham in the 1980s.
In October 2013, the commercial radio station Free Radio moved its local operations for the Black Country and Shropshire from Wolverhampton to new studios at Black Country House.
Transport links
Rail
For over thirty years, there were three railway stations in the parish with the name Oldbury; only one is still open, but under a new name. The surviving one, on the Stour Valley Line at Bromford Road, has existed since the 1850s. It was originally called Oldbury & Bromford Lane, then Oldbury, and since 1984, Sandwell & Dudley.