Spring Vale is a ward of Wolverhampton City Council, West Midlands, England. It is situated SSE of the city centre, on the city's border with the Metropolitan Borough of Dudley. The population of the ward taken at the 2011 census was 12,243. [1]
Wolverhampton is a city and metropolitan borough in the West Midlands, England. At the 2011 census, it had a population of 249,470. The demonym for people from the city is 'Wulfrunian'.
The West Midlands is a metropolitan county and city region in western-central England with a 2014 estimated population of 2,808,356, making it the second most populous county in England after Greater London. It came into existence as a metropolitan county in 1974 after the passage of the Local Government Act 1972, formed from parts of Staffordshire, Worcestershire and Warwickshire. The county itself is a NUTS 2 region within the wider NUTS 1 region of the same name. The county consists of seven metropolitan boroughs: the City of Birmingham, the City of Coventry and the City of Wolverhampton, as well as the boroughs of Dudley, Sandwell, Solihull and Walsall.
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to the west and Scotland to the north-northwest. The Irish Sea lies west of England and the Celtic Sea lies to the southwest. England is separated from continental Europe by the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south. The country covers five-eighths of the island of Great Britain, which lies in the North Atlantic, and includes over 100 smaller islands, such as the Isles of Scilly and the Isle of Wight.
As well as Dudley, Spring Vale borders the Blakenhall, Ettingshall and Bilston East wards, and forms part of the Wolverhampton South East constituency. It contains the suburbs of Ettingshall Park, Woodcross (which is actually part of the Bilston township) and Lanesfield.
The Metropolitan Borough of Dudley is a metropolitan borough of West Midlands in England. It was created in 1974 following the Local Government Act 1972, through a merger of the existing Dudley County Borough with the municipal boroughs of Stourbridge and Halesowen. The borough borders Sandwell to the east, the city of Birmingham to the south east, Bromsgrove to the south in Worcestershire, South Staffordshire District to the west, and the city of Wolverhampton to the north.
Blakenhall is a ward in Wolverhampton, England.
Ettingshall is an area of Wolverhampton, West Midlands, England, and is a ward of Wolverhampton City Council. The population of this ward taken at the 2011 census was 13,482.
The area has seen some regeneration in recent years, as a result of the close of the Bilston Steel Works in 1979 by British Steel Corporation. The works were a major employer for the area and the location where the first Bessemer blast furnace was installed, which allowed the invention of Tarmac using burnt coal residue.[ citation needed ] The closure of works resulted in the loss of 2,000 and the surrounding communities all witnessed a rise in unemployment and significant damage to their local economies. [2]
The Bessemer process was the first inexpensive industrial process for the mass production of steel from molten pig iron before the development of the open hearth furnace. The key principle is removal of impurities from the iron by oxidation with air being blown through the molten iron. The oxidation also raises the temperature of the iron mass and keeps it molten.
Tarmacadam is a road surfacing material made by combining macadam surfaces, tar, and sand, patented by Welsh inventor Edgar Purnell Hooley in 1902. The terms "tarmacadam" and tarmac are also used, with varying degrees of correctness, for a variety of other materials, including tar-grouted macadam, bituminous surface treatments, and modern asphalt concrete. The term is also often used to describe airport aprons, taxiways, and runways regardless of the surface.
In 1994, Blue Lamp and Tarmac Industries developed the land building Springvale Retail Park, providing new employment to local people. In 1995, Blue Lamp Business Parks Ltd. commissioned a landmark sculpture called 'Roll Down', designed and created by sculptor Robert Erskine FRBS. [3] 'Roll Down' stands on the exact location of where the number 1 Bessemer Blast Furnace, known as Elizabeth to the steel workers, was sited. At a height of 45 feet (14 m) and 18.5 feet (6 m) wide, 'Roll Down' is made of wrought stainless steel. [3] It was nominated for the Anderson Sculpture Prize. The sculpture was unveiled on 19 October 1994 by Labour MP Dennis Turner, who had worked as a steelman at the Elizabeth blast furnace. [3] Past steel workers were invited to the ceremony and reception. 250 children from the Springvale Primary school adjacent to the sculpture, buried memory capsules beneath the sculpture. This was after a tour organised by Robert Erskine to the works in Derby where he was creating 'Roll Down', and involved the children in the project. The capsules contain poignant stories of the children's families experiencing unemployment, but also messages of thought for the future. Many children provided precious artifacts and objects from their relatives, which in time will be revealed and preserved for future generations. 'Roll Down' is designed to last a minimum of 500 years.
Robert Erskine (1735–1780) was a Scottish inventor and engineer who came to the British Thirteen Colonies in 1771 to run the ironworks at Ringwood, New Jersey, and later became sympathetic to the movement for independence. In 1776 during the American Revolutionary War, he designed an underwater cheval-de-frise installed across the Hudson River at the north end of Manhattan to prevent passage of British ships upriver. General George Washington appointed him as Geographer and Surveyor General of the Continental Army at the rank of colonel; Erskine drew more than 275 maps, mostly of the Northeast region.
The Labour Party is a centre-left political party in the United Kingdom. Presently led by Jeremy Corbyn, it is currently the Official Opposition in the UK Parliament. It has 246 Members of Parliament in the House of Commons, 186 members of the House of Lords, and 19 members of the European Parliament. It also has 23 Members of the Scottish Parliament, 29 members of the Welsh Assembly, 12 members of the London Assembly and 6,437 local councillors. Since the 1920s, it has been the second most successful party in UK politics, forming the government on 14 occasions.
Also located in the ward is Spring Vale Library on Bevan Avenue. [4]
The Black Country is an area of the West Midlands, England, west of Birmingham and commonly refers to a region covering most of the four Metropolitan Boroughs of Dudley, Sandwell, Walsall and Wolverhampton. During the Industrial Revolution, it became one of the most industrialised parts of Britain with coal mines, coking, iron foundries, glass factories, brickworks and steel mills producing a high level of air pollution.
Bilston is a town in the English administrative county of West Midlands, situated in the southeastern corner of the City of Wolverhampton. Historically in Staffordshire, three wards of Wolverhampton City Council cover the town: Bilston East and Bilston North, which almost entirely comprise parts of the historic Borough of Bilston, and Ettingshall which comprises a part of Bilston and parts of Wolverhampton.
Open hearth furnaces are one of a number of kinds of furnace where excess carbon and other impurities are burnt out of pig iron to produce steel. Since steel is difficult to manufacture due to its high melting point, normal fuels and furnaces were insufficient and the open hearth furnace was developed to overcome this difficulty. Compared to Bessemer steel, which it displaced, its main advantages were that it did not expose the steel to excessive nitrogen, was easier to control, and it permitted the melting and refining of large amounts of scrap iron and steel.
Coseley is a suburban area in the north of the Dudley Metropolitan Borough, in the English West Midlands. Part of the Black Country, it is situated approximately three miles north of Dudley itself, on the border with Wolverhampton. Though it is a part of Dudley for statistical and administrative purposes, it is divided between the Bilston and Tipton postal districts, and mostly falls within the Wolverhampton South-East parliamentary constituency.
Lanesfield is a district now within the boundaries of Wolverhampton, specifically in the city council's Spring Vale ward. Lanesfield lies within the Ancient Manor of Sedgley and was a rural village for many years until the growth of the Black Country's industries. Lanesfield's name originates from the Lane family who lived where the area now stands. Originally, Lanesfield was known as Lane's Field.
Wolverhampton South East is a borough constituency represented in the House of Commons of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. It elects one Member of Parliament (MP) by the first past the post system of election.
Bilston East is a ward of Wolverhampton City Council, West Midlands. It covers the southern and eastern parts of the town of Bilston, as well as Bradley. It borders the Spring Vale, Ettingshall, and Bilston North wards, as well as the Metropolitan Boroughs of Walsall, Sandwell, and Dudley. It forms part of the Wolverhampton South East constituency.
The Stour Valley Line is the historic and colloquial name for the line of the Birmingham, Wolverhampton and Stour Valley Railway Company between Birmingham and Bushbury, just north of Wolverhampton in the West Midlands, England. It now forms part of the "Birmingham Loop" or "Rugby–Birmingham–Stafford Line" of the West Coast Main Line. The "Stour Valley" was a branch which was never built, yet it gives its name to the whole section.
City of Wolverhampton Council is the governing body of the City of Wolverhampton, England. The Council is still legally called Wolverhampton City Council but uses City of Wolverhampton Council as its corporate brand.
The Edgar Thomson Steel Works is a steel mill in the Pittsburgh area communities of Braddock and North Braddock, Pennsylvania, United States. It has been active since 1872. It is currently owned by U.S. Steel and is known as Mon Valley Works – Edgar Thomson Plant on its official website.
Stewarts & Lloyds was a steel tube manufacturer with its headquarters in Glasgow at 41 Oswald Street. The company was created in 1903 by the amalgamation of two of the largest iron and steel makers in Britain, A. & J. Stewart & Menzies Ltd, Coatbridge, North Lanarkshire, Scotland and Lloyd & Lloyd Ltd, Birmingham, England.
The Round Oak Steelworks was an important steel production plant in Brierley Hill, West Midlands, England. It was founded by Lord Ward, later the Earl of Dudley in 1857 as an outlet for pig iron made in the nearby blast furnaces. During the Industrial Revolution, the majority of iron-making in the world was carried out within 32 kilometres of Round Oak. For the first decades of operation, the works produced wrought iron. However in the 1890s, steelmaking was introduced. At its peak, thousands of people were employed at the works. The steelworks was the first in the United Kingdom to be converted to natural gas, which was supplied from the North Sea. The works were nationalized in 1951, privatized in 1953 and nationalized again in 1967 although the private firm Tube Investments continued to part manage the operations at the site. The steelworks closed in December 1982.
Sir Alfred Hickman, 1st Baronet was a British industrialist and Conservative party politician who was a Member of Parliament (MP) between 1885 and 1906.
Eber Brock Ward was an American iron and steel manufacturer and shipbuilder. He was known as the "steamship king of the Great Lakes" and as the "first of the iron kings." Ward became Detroit's first millionaire. He was the wealthiest man in the Midwest, in his time, due to his steel factories.
Ebbw Vale Steelworks was an integrated steel mill located in Ebbw Vale, South Wales. Developed from 1790, by the late 1930s it had become the largest steel mill in Europe. Nationalized after World War II, as the steel industry changed to bulk handling, iron and steel making was ceased in the 1970s, as the site was redeveloped as a specialised tinplate works. Closed by Corus in 2002, the site is being redeveloped in a joint-partnership between Blaenau Gwent Council and the Welsh Government.
John Jones, and his brothers William Highfield Jones and Joseph Jones, were successful industrialists, benefactors and politicians. They all became aldermen and served as Mayor of Wolverhampton.
Coordinates: 52°33′11″N2°06′25″W / 52.553°N 2.107°W
A geographic coordinate system is a coordinate system that enables every location on Earth to be specified by a set of numbers, letters or symbols. The coordinates are often chosen such that one of the numbers represents a vertical position and two or three of the numbers represent a horizontal position; alternatively, a geographic position may be expressed in a combined three-dimensional Cartesian vector. A common choice of coordinates is latitude, longitude and elevation. To specify a location on a plane requires a map projection.
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