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Blackheath, West MidlandsBlackheath is a town in England's Black Country, part of the administrative district of Sandwell. Before 1841 Bleak Heath or Blake Heath was a small group of farm houses and inns on the turnpike road from Oldbury to Halesowen, within Rowley Regis. The changes brought about by the industrial revolution led to a Private Act in June that year that allowed the sale of the Rowley Regis glebe lands in order to finance the building of a new vicarage. The land was purchased by developers who, throughout the remainder of the 19th century, expanded Blackheath as a dormitory town for the surrounding industries, in particular, the coal mine at Coombes Wood and the Hailstone quarry. Workers migrated to Blackheath from across England and particularly from Wales until the town and its neighbours grew to form the existing conurbation with nearby Birmingham. The parish of St Paul was established in 1865 as a distinct entity from that of Rowley Regis and the new church consecrated in 1869. There has also been a long tradition of nonconformism with many Methodist and Baptist chapels. A market was established in ???? and an extension of the Great Western Railway linking Birmingham and Worcester opened a station in the town in 1867. Into the 20th century, manufacturing grew and extractive industries declined with the last coal mine closing in 1919. Major employers were the fasteners business at the Excelsior Works of Thomas William Lench and the electrical engineering business of British Thomson-Houston (BTH). Manufacturing remained the main source of income up to the start of the 21st century with the BTH works still in operation though in the intervening years it has worked under the successive names of AEI, GEC, GEC ALSTHOM, Hawker-Siddeley, BTR and Electrodrives. Blackheath was part of Rowley Regis County Borough from 1894 until 1966, when it became part of Warley County Borough. This arrangement lasted just eight years until Warley merged with West Bromwich in 1974 to create Sandwell Metropolitan Borough. Blackheath has always been a predominately working class area dominated by modest housing. The town was hard hit by the economic slow-down of the 1970s and unemployment of the early 1980s. However, in the 1990s the town became more prosperous with improving housing stock and some substantial development in town centre stores and improvement in the road network. Football team Blackheath Town F.C. play in the West Midlands (Regional) League Division One (South). External link
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