Tipton is an industrial Black Country town in the metropolitan borough of Sandwell, in the county of the West Midlands, England. It had a population of 38,777 at the 2011 UK census. It is located northwest of Birmingham and southeast of Wolverhampton, and is also contiguous with Darlaston, Dudley, Wednesbury and Bilston.
It incorporates the surrounding villages and suburbs of Tipton Green, Ocker Hill, Dudley Port, Horseley Heath and Great Bridge.
Historically within Staffordshire and briefly Worcestershire, Tipton was an urban district until 1938, when it became a municipal borough. Much of the borough was transferred into West Bromwich County Borough in 1966, but parts of the old borough were absorbed into an expanded Dudley borough and the newly created County Borough of Warley. Along with the rest of West Bromwich and Warley, Tipton was moved into the Sandwell Metropolitan Borough in 1974.
Toponymy Tipton gains its name from the Anglo-Saxon name Tibba followed by , the Old English word for farm or settlement. The town of Tipton was recorded as Tibintone in the Domesday Book of 1086, meaning Tibba's estate.Probably Tibba +ing + tun or Tibban + tun; The present spelling of Tipton derives from the 16th century. The town was nicknamed the 'town of a hundred tips', although its name is much older.
History
Until the 18th century, Tipton was a collection of small hamlets. Industrial growth (proto-industrialization) started in the town when ironstone and coal were discovered in the 1770s. A number of canals were built through the town and later railways, which greatly accelerated its industrialisation.
In the 1770s, James Watt built his first steam engine to pump water from the Bloomfield Colliery in Tipton. In 1780, James Keir and Alexander Blair set up a chemical works there, making alkali and soap on a large scale.
The 1801 census records 834 houses with 872 families living in Tipton: 46 houses were stated as being empty. An adult population of 4,280 is recorded with males numbered at 2,218 and females at 2,062. Iron making and coal mining were the main employment for the population. Trades and manufacturing provided work for 1,740 people and other jobs totalled 2,484. Between Tipton and Dudley there were a few farms listed, which gave employment to 56 people.
Expansion in the iron and coal industries led to the population of Tipton expanding rapidly through the 19th century, going from 4,000 at the beginning of the century to 30,000 at the end. Tipton gained a reputation as being "the quintessence of the Black Country" because chimneys of local factories belched heavy pollution into the air, whilst houses and factories were built side by side. Several family businesses like James Lister and Sons, an ironmongery, emerged during this time to support industries by providing essential supplies. Most of the traditional industries which once dominated the town have since disappeared.
In the Tipton Catastrophe of March 1922, 19 girls – as young as 13 – and young women were killed in an explosion at an unlicensed factory that was dismantling surplus World War I munitions.
The Black Country Living Museum in nearby Dudley re-creates life in the early 20th century Black Country, in original buildings which have been rebuilt and furnished, many of them being transported from – or based on – sites originally located in Tipton. There is a residential canal basin at the museum, reflecting Tipton's former status in popular local culture as the 'Venice of the Midlands'. Some of the town's canals were infilled during the 1960s and 1970s. The towpaths of the remaining canals, the Old and New BCN Main Lines are today a cycling, wildlife and leisure facility.
The landscape of Tipton began to change further from the late 1920s when new housing estates were built by the town's council in response to the growing need to replace slum housing. Among the first council estates to be built were the Shrubbery Estate at Tipton Green, the Tibbington Estate near Princes End (which came under Coseley at the time), the Moat Farm Estate at Ocker Hill (which earned the nickname "Lost City" due to its isolated location), and the Cotterill's Farm Estate at Ocker Hill, the Glebefields Estate at Ocker Hill and Great Bridge. Private houses were also built on smaller developments around the same time. The "Lost City" was integrated with the rest of Tipton as further housing developments sprang up around it namely The Glebefields Estate and The Gospel Oak Estate.
During the Second World War (1939–1945), Nazi Germany made The Blitz, a bombing campaign against the United Kingdom (7 September 1940 to 11 May 1941). There were a number of air raids on Tipton. On 19 November 1940, three people were killed by a Luftwaffe bomb which was dropped in Bloomfield Road and destroyed several buildings including the Star public house; it was rebuilt after the war and demolished in 1996. Just before Christmas in 1940, an anti-aircraft shell fired from the hills at Rowley Regis fell down the chimney of the Boat Inn, Dudley Road East, Tividale; fatally injuring 12 people at a wedding reception (including the bride, while the groom lost both legs) as well as the resident of an adjacent house. On 17 May 1941, six people died in an air raid in New Road, Great Bridge. Tipton Tavern and New Road Methodist Church were destroyed and a number of nearby houses were damaged. Tipton Tavern landlord Roger Preece was trapped in the rubble but survived with minor injuries.
Tipton Tavern was rebuilt in the 1950s and became the Hallbridge Arms during the 1990s and, more recently, the Pearl Girl, the world's first licensed pearl bar. It closed in 2016 and has since been converted into a day nursery for young children.
The last major council housing development by Tipton council was the Glebefields Estate part of Ocker Hill and not Princes End as many suggest, due to Princes End not being part of Tipton at this time, and built during the first half of the 1960s. A stretch of the Wednesbury Oak Loop Canal was filled in to make way for it. The last major private housing development to be built in the Municipal Borough of Tipton was the Foxyards Estate, on land straddling the borders with Dudley and Coseley, in the mid 1960s.
By the end of the 1970s, most of the housing in Tipton built before 1890 had been demolished. Owen Street, the town's main shopping area, was redeveloped between 1979 and 1982, with a reduced number of shop units as well as new low-rise council houses and flats.
In 1956, one of Britain's first comprehensive schools, Tividale Comprehensive School, was opened in Tipton near the border with Oldbury, in the area which became part of Warley a decade later and was not included in the modern Tipton DY4 postal district.
Tipton's first gasworks was opened in 1958 and redeveloped as a state-of-the-art naphtha gas plant by 1965, but owing to the emergence of North Sea gas, the gasworks closed in 1975 and stood empty for a decade before demolition. The site of the gas plant was redeveloped as the 'Standbridge Park housing estates' in the 1990s.
Tipton has two railway stations, the main railway station at Owen Street and another station at Dudley Port. There were several other stations in the town on three different railway lines, but these were gradually closed between 1916 and 1964 as passenger trains were phased out on these lines. The Dudley-Wolverhampton railway line, which straddled Tipton's border with Coseley, closed in 1968. The Princes End Branch Line, which was only two miles long, closed in 1981. The South Staffordshire Line through Tipton, which led to Walsall northwards and Dudley southwards, closed in 1993. The part of the line between Wednesbury and Brierley Hill was scheduled to re-open in 2025 as a part of Midland Metro line 2.
Most of the archive collection for Tipton is held at Sandwell Community History and Archives Service; some items have been retained by the town's library.
Economy and industry
Tipton was one of the key towns in the Industrial Revolution of the 19th century. Even during the 18th century it had established its first key industries. This included the world's first successful steam pumping engine, which was erected at Conygre Coalworks in 1712 by industrialist Thomas Newcomen. A full-size replica of the engine now exists at the Black Country Living Museum just over Tipton's borders in Dudley.
In 1800, Tipton was a predominantly rural area, with a few coal mines and some 4,000 residents. Mass building of factories and digging of coal mines then took place, and resulted in Tipton becoming a heavily built-up and industrialised area with more than 30,000 residents by the end of the 19th century. The town's population grew further in the 20th century after new housing developments, mostly by the local council but with a significant number in the private sector. Local industry also expanded further during this time.
In 1840, the Batson family established a lubricant blending plant to serve the local industries at the junction of High Street and Dudley Road. The site is still operational today, owned by German refiner H&R AG, although the original buildings have long since been replaced.
Coal mining had disappeared from Tipton by the mid-20th century, and the town lost a large percentage of its factories during the recessions of the 1970s and 1980s, which contributed to a rise in unemployment and poverty in Tipton, while living conditions continued to improve.
Bean Cars, a company that manufactured cars and lorry engines and other vehicle parts, had a factory in Tipton.The Bean Further industrial sites have been abandoned since the 1970s, paving the way for mass private house building on the land. The town's naphtha gas plant opened in 1965 but closed just 10 years later, unable to compete with natural gas from the North Sea. The gasworks stood abandoned for about a decade afterwards, when it was finally demolished. Standeridge Park housing estate was built on its site during the 1990s. By the late 2000s, most of the town's large factories had closed.
Horseley Ironworks, built steel structures, such as the 400 kV Thames Crossing at Thurrock, the tallest in the UK.Birmingham Daily Post Wednesday 1 November 1961, page 2
Geography
Great Bridge, located in the western section of the town around Great Bridge town centre, near the border with West Bromwich. Dudley Port, located south of the Dudley Port train station, adjacent to Dudley and Tividale. Horseley Heath, in between Great Bridge and Dudley Port. Ocker Hill, located in the very north of the town, on the border with Wednesbury, 1 mile (1.6 km) west of Princes End high street. The area includes the Leabrook Road estate, Toll End, and Moat Farm (locally known as "the Lost City"). Princes End, located immediately north of Princes end high street, on the border with Bilston. Tibbington, in between Princes End high street and Tipton town centre. Tipton Green, the area surrounding the town centre. Glebefields, located around the western section of St Mark's road, south-east of Princes End high street.
Governance
Until 1966, the town had its own council. The urban district council of Tipton was formed in 1894 contained only the civil parish of Tipton, then received Municipal Borough status in 1938. The headquarters were originally based in a 19th-century building on Owen Street until 1935 when it relocated to the former Bean offices site on Sedgley Road West, straddling the border with Coseley. The council remained at that site for the next 31 years, until the dissolution of the borough council.