Smethwick

Smethwick (pronounced smethick) is a town in south-east Staffordshire which makes up part of the Black Country. Smethwick lies around 3 ½ miles west of central Birmingham in Warwickshire. Smethwick has a population of around 50,000. The M5 motorway demarcates the western limit of the town. Among its most notable buildings is the Smethwick Old Church, the oldest surviving building in the Smethwick ward, which was consecrated in 1732. The world's first working engine, the Smethwick Engine, was made in the town in the 1770s. Galton Bridge, designed by Thomas Telford and opened in 1829, is in Smethwick.

For local government purposes, Smethwick is administered by Sandwell Council.

Name

Recorded in the Domesday Book (1086) as Smedeuuich, the name is most likely from Old English for "smooth land village", with it previously being interpreted as meaning "(black)smith's village".

Geography

Smethwick lies in the far-south of Staffordshire and is part of the Offlow Hundred, just north of the a salient containing the Harborne area of Birmingham. Warley Wigorn lies to the south-west and Oldbury lies to the north-west. Soho, which is east of the town centre, is a residential area straddling the Staffordshire-Warwickshire border and split between Smethwick and Birmingham, whose city centre lies 3 ½ miles to the east. Other residential areas of Smethwick include Bearwood, Cape Hill, Galton Village, Londonderry (split between Oldbury and Smethwick) and the Uplands.

A former bakery in the Bearwood area of Smethwick marks the site of a shire oak, where Staffordshire traditionally borders Shropshire detatched to the north-west and a detached part of Worcestershire to the south-west. The site is located at the junction between Three Shires Oak Road and Thimblemill Road.