Spinners End in Sandwell (near Birmingham) and Dudley (OT)

[arrowsmithbt]

No: HPFGUIDX 117041


--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "Geoff Bannister" <gbannister10 at a...> wrote:
> 
> Geoff:
> Sandwell was a name which appeared in the 1970s when a number of 
> administrative reorganisations took place and obscure names surfaced 
> for the new boroughs - Sandwell, Hyndburn, Thamesdown and Waveney 
> come to mind. It isn't near Birmingham, it's part of Birmingham. The 
> whole area is now administratively the West Midlands including Brum 
> (the nickname for Birmingham), Coventry, Walsall and Wolverhampton 
> inter alia.
> 
>

Kneasy:
Tut, tut.
It's got nothing at all to do with Birmingham and never has.

I speak as someone who was born and bred there, though I've since
moved on.
All  the old towns that make up the  administrative abortion that is 
Sandwell (Oldbury, West Bromwich, Smethwick etc.) were even in
a different county (Staffs) to Brum (Warks).
It's not so little either, (population is in the hundreds of thousands),
nor is it pretty, it's the old Black Country industrial region.

I don't remember any Spinners End (though there was a Netherend).
I suspect that it's all new development. Checking an old (1970s) 
A to Z against Spinners End entries on the web, there's no congruence
- none of the current street names shown on the web can be found in
that area on 30 year old street maps. 

It's probably named as a nod to the local 'heritage'. Any spinning done
there would have been steel cables, not fabric.

Some of the original names are evocative; Swan Village for example.
But any swan found there was a pub. A real swan  would have been
paddling through industrial effluent on the local canal, coughing it's
lungs out. Fortunately there's been a big clean up in the past 20 years.

Sounds as if it was horrible, I know. Didn't seem so at the time; and
whenever I chance to go back it still feels like slipping on an old pair
of comfortable slippers.  I'm home.