A History of the County of Stafford – Volume XVII Greenslade Hardback

A History of the County of StaffordVolume XVII\nAuthor(s): M.W. Greenslade\nFormat: Hardback\nPublisher: Oxford University Press, United Kingdom\nImprint: Early English Text Society\nISBN-13: 9780197227435, 978-0197227435\nSynopsis\nHistorical accounts of three important industrial towns of the Black Country fill the present volume. West Bromwich, Smethwick, and Walsall are all close neighbours and all former county boroughs. West Bromwich had a domes-tic nailing industry in the 16th century but remained a scattered settlement on the heathland of the coal measures until the development of its mining and iron industry in the mid 19th. Smethwick's growth began with the building of the Birmingham canal in the late 18th century and was particularly marked from the 1830s-. Walsall, an early medieval borough with its church standing on a limestone hill at the town's centre, underwent a rapid increase in population from the 1820s. Immigrants to man the indus-tries of the area have included .