Did You Know?

Stourbridge is a market town in the West Midlands county of England. Situated on the River Stour, it was the centre of British glass making during the Industrial Revolution.

In 1966, the Stourbridge border between Worcestershire and Staffordshire, which for centuries had been marked by the River Stour, was moved a couple of miles north when Amblecote was incorporated into the Borough of Stourbridge. Following the Local Government Act 1972, Stourbridge was amalgamated into the Metropolitan Borough of Dudley and became part of the wider West Midlands county in 1974.

Stourbridge was listed in the 1255 Worcestershire assize roll as Sturbrug or Sturesbridge. The medieval township was named for a bridge which crossed the River Stour. It lay within the manor of Swynford or Suineford (now Old Swinford), which appears in William the Conqueror's Domesday Book of 1086.

Much of Stourbridge consists of residential streets interspersed with green spaces. Mary Stevens Park, opened in 1931, has a lake, a bandstand, a cafe, and a mixture of open spaces and woodland.

The town gives its name to local glass production, which has been manufactured since the early 1600s. The local glass proved particularly suitable for the industry, taken up predominantly after the immigration of French coal miners in the Huguenot diaspora. The 1861 census identified that 1,032 residents of Stourbridge were involved in the glass trade in some way. Of these, 541 were glass workers - an increase from 409 in 1851, believed to be partly caused by the collapse of the glass industry in nearby Dudley in the 1850s.

Built in 1828, the Stourbridge Lion was the very first steam locomotive to run in the USA – and one of the very first to operate outside of Britain, making history.

Srourbridge in the Black Country was the first place to successfully harness the power of steam, and changed the world in doing so. The Newcomen Engine is the size of a house – and the Black Country Living Museum has the world’s only full scale replica.

The anchor for the Titanic was made in the Stourbridge in 1911 by Noah Hingley and towed to Dudley train station by 20 shire horses to start its journey to Belfast.