BROMWICH (WEST), a parish in the southern
division of the hundred of OFFLOW, county of STAFFORD,
3 miles (S. E. by S.) from Wednesbury, containing
9505 inhabitants, according to the census of 1821,
since-which time its population has increased to nearly
15,000. This place, which is in the centre of an extensive
manufacturing and mining district, has, within the
last 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 ironstone
and coal beneath the soil, in almost every direction,
affording the utmost facility of establishing works
upon the most extensive scale, have consequently attracted
the notice of the enterprising and ingenious,
and, from little more than a barren heath, a populous
and flourishing'town has arisen. It extends for more
than three miles along the high road from Birmingham
to Holyhead, and, exclusively of the numerous dwellings
of the people employed in the various works and manufactories,
and the respectable houses of the persons
who superintend them, contains many handsome private
residences, and several pleasing villas 'inhabited by
their proprietors. The parish is well lighted with gas,
and the inhabitants are abundantly supplied with water
from springs and pumps attached to their houses.
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, fireirons,
locks, bolts, hinges, nails, sadlers' ironmongery,
coach furniture, iron culinary utensils, chains, traces,
spades and other implements of husbandry, steel toys,
gas tubes and fittings, palisades and ornamental iron
work of every kind; among the larger works are furnaces
for the smelting of iron-ore, foundries, forges,
slitting mills, in which, and also in the various collieries,
numerous steam-engines are employed. Very extensive
gas-works have been established by a company of proprietors,
from which part of Birmingham, seven miles distant,
is lighted: from these works, which are on a very
extensive scale, Wednesbury, three miles distant; Dudley,
four miles; Bilston, four miles; Darlaston, four miles;
Tipton, two miles and a half; and Great Bridge, one
mile and a half distant, are also supplied with gas, the
conveyance of which, from the main gasometer at West
Bromwich to the several places lighted by the company,
employs a series of tubes of the aggregate length of
nearly one hundred and fifty miles. 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. West Bromwich is within the
jurisdiction of the county magistrates, who hold a petty
session here every Saturday.
The living is a perpetual curacy, in the archdeaconry
of Stafford, and diocese of Lichfield and Coventry, endowed
-with £200 royal bounty, and £2800 parliamentary
grant, and in the patronage of the Earl of Dartmonth.
The church, dedicated to.St, Clementy is an
ancient structure, of which, notwithstanding numerous
alterations and additions, a portion of the original character
remains. The first stone of. Christ church was
laid by the Earl of Dartmouth, in 1821, and the huilding
was completed in 1828,at'an expense of £ 12;446.2.6.,
part of which was defrayed by subscription, and the
jrem'ainder by grant from the parliamentary commissioners;
it is a handsome edifice of stone, in the later
style of English architecture, with a lofty square, embat-
tled tower, and contains one thousand four hundred and
eight sittings, of which seven hundred and thirty-seven
are free. There are six places of .worship forWesleyan,
and four for Primitive Methodists, three for Baptists,
three for Independents, and two for Kilhamites. Two
National schools, one for boys and the ether for girls,
are supported by subscription, and there are Sunday
schools connected with the established .church and the
several dissenting congregations. -A* priory of Benedictine
monks was founded at the close of the reign of
-Henry II., or the beginning of that of Richard L, by
William, son of Guy de Opheni, at Sandwell, which was
dedicated to St. Mary Magdalene j it was suppressed
for the endowment of .Cardinal Wolsey'.s intended colleges,
in the 17th of Henry VIII., at "which time its revenue
was £38. 8.7., the site is now occupied by the
splendid mansion of the Earl of Dartmouth. The land
in some parts of the parish is in a high state of cultivation,
and the surface varied with pleasing undulations:
the river Tame passes through it, and at a place
called Wigmore is a chalybeate spring. A tesselated
pavement was discovered in the village, in 1741. Wil-
liam Parsons, the gigantic porter of James I., whose portrait
was for a long time hung up in the guard-room
at Whitehall, and whose figure in has relief, with that
.of Jeffrey Hudson, the celebrated dwarf, appeared in the
front of a house in Newgate-street, London, .was a native
of this parish.